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Obituary -Andreas Oksche

Editor for the section "Neuroendocrinology" until his death has peacefully passed away on 23 January 2017 at the age of 90. Editors of Cell & Tissue Research, many friends and colleagues worldwide mourn his death. Andreas Oksche was born in Riga, Latvia, and started his career as a neuroanatomist and neuroendocrinologist at the University of Marburg under the guidance of Professors Benninghoff and Niessing. Already in his earliest work he addressed topics such as the secretory features of glia and the subcommissural organ, which were to accompany him in his future career. For his postdoctoral work Andreas Oksche joined the laboratory of Ernst and Berta Scharrer, two pioneers in neuroendocrinology and hypothalamic-pituitary neurosecretion. He then moved to the University of Kiel and its Anatomy department led by Wolfgang Bargmann, who had established a center for research on hypothalamic neurosecretion since the late 1940s. Andreas Oksche's contributions made there until he left to take up an appointment at the Universiy of Giessen were essential to broaden the perception of the brain in its secretory capacities and of the neuralendocrine hybrid character of neurons. The discovery that such neuroendocrine cells could simultaneously act as photoreceptors and the elucidation of their fine structure was a culmination in the search for mechanisms underlying the regulation of the neuroendocrine networks. Like many of those who had been mentored by Wolfgang Bargmann, Andreas Oksche also took a comparative anatomical approach exploiting the benefits of this strategy for interpolating functions from common structural features across animal phyla and classes. At the Anatomy department in Giessen, which Andreas Oksche chaired for 30 years, he established a center in pineal and extraretinal photoreceptor research with international visibility and reputation. The "Giessen