Ilse Zolle (1931-2009)

On May 8th 2009, my boss Werner Sieghart discovered the announcement of the Medical University Vienna that Ilse Zolle passed away unexpectedly on April 8th. This fact was of some importance to both of us, since a collaborative paper was in the process of revision for Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters (Atucha et al 2009), and we've been waiting - with considerable uneasiness - for her overdue comments.
This uneasiness resulted from her less than helpful comments delivered during the writing of the manuscript and from my rather harmful experiences during the preparation of our last publication (Zolle et al 2008). Therefore, I received the notice of her sudden death with mixed feelings. On one hand, I felt relief, since now we could proceed with the publication of our data without any further quarrel and delay. On the other hand, I felt moved and bewildered to an extent, that came as a surprise to me.
Why should I moan the death of this person? She was ruthless and stubborn, wasted my time over the years with endless discussions on trivial scientific problems, was not acquainted with the basic rules of scientific conduct, and did not hesitate to intervene at the highest level, if I didn't act in the way she wanted me to act.
Our first contact dates back to the year 1990 when she needed advice with the binding of a radioligand custom-labelled with tritium by Amersham in 1984. Although this binding site (concerning an enzyme in the adrenals) was far off my main interests, I agreed to advise her methodically. My first trouble was to explain to her that the binding of a radioligand was not quantified by measuring the loss of radioactivity in the supernatant after centrifugation, but the gain of radioactivity in the particulate fraction. This hardship was alleviated by the charming character of her student Jie Yu from China.
After more than 3 years, Jie Yu (we called her Julia) finished her thesis and returned to her family in China in 1994. Ilse Zolle was furious. Over the years, Julia had become her technical assistant and personal secretary, keeping things going in the lab, and Zolle was hoping that she would stay. She didn't hesitate to accuse me of having written large parts of Julia's thesis and even wrote a letter to my boss (Hornykiewicz at that time). This led to a first hiatus in our relationship, lasting for some years.
I was recontacted by Ilse Zolle in 2000, bringing along another charming student (Martina Netter) and a new radioligand, this time labelled with Technetium (her central expertise: Zolle 2006). Again, I had a hard time explaining that autoradiographs showing nice labelling of the adrenal cortex were without meaning, if no difference was seen between total and non-specific binding. In addition, it soon turned out that the technetium with its complexing residues was too bulky as a substituent at this position of the ligand molecule and led to a total loss of binding affinity.
In amazing persistence, Zolle soon arrived with a third radioligand, this time not accompanied by another charming student but supported by my colleague from student days, Friedrich Hammerschmidt (Organic Chemistry, University Vienna). This ligand was labelled by iodine-131, had to be handled behind a wall of lead, and was of real high affinity. After completion of the data by in vitro endocrinology in cooperation with colleagues in Würzburg, Zolle objected against a first manuscript version prepared by myself and submitted in spring 2007 her own version to JMC without sharing it with her coauthors. We soon found out, why.
When - to our big surprise - the editor of the JMC signalled he would accept the paper for publication, provided we would apply some minor revisions, we insisted to see the submitted and the revised version. We succeeded only after having asked the Dean of the Life Sciences Faculty for help (at that time Christian Noe), who applied massive pressure upon Zolle. Only then we discovered that Zolle had changed the data to her taste. And she did not apologize for having done so, on the contrary: she attacked us furiously and claimed that she as the corresponding author and project leader had the right to do so.
Ilse Zolle had even the hubris to contact the directors of my institution (Sandkühler) and of the Endocrinology Lab in Würzburg (Allolio), and asked them to discipline their subordinates. It finally took explicit letters of all coauthors to the editor of the JMC to force her to submit a consensual final version of the manuscript, with the true data (and not with the fabricated ones). It appears still as a miracle to me that this paper appeared in print.
Often in the early evening, like now, unexpectedly the department's bell rang. Behind the ribbed glass of our department's door, the silhouette of a figure carrying an unmistakably red Julius-Meinl bag made its appearance. The "Julius-Meinl" at the Graben in the first district was her favorite shop; from there, she often brought some snacks with her ("You got to eat something!"). Maybe now, I miss these snacks? Maybe I regret that she will not procure any further charming students for me? For some unexplainable reason, I already miss her.
4/09 <         MB (5/09)          > 6/09
meinlbag
Atucha E, Hammerschmidt F, Zolle I, Sieghart W, Berger ML (2009) Structure-activity relationship of etomidate derivatives at the GABAA receptor: comparison with binding to 11ß- hydroxylase.Bioorg Med Chem Lett 19:4284-87.
Ilse Zolle (Ed., 2006) Technetium-99m Pharmaceuticals: Preparation and Quality Control in Nuclear Medicine.Springer 2006.
Zolle IM, Berger ML, Hammerschmidt F, Hahner S, Schirbel A, Peric-Simov B (2008) New Selective Inhibitors of Steroid 11ß-Hydroxylation in the Adrenal Cortex. Synthesis and Structure-Activity Relationship of Potent Etomidate Analogues. J Med Chem 51:2244-2253