A tribute to Niels B . Atkin on the occasion of his 90 th Birthday Prepared by : Harold

ABC Fax + 41 61 306 12 34 E-mail [email protected] www.karger.com © 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel Accessible online at: www.karger.com/cgr The Editors and Publisher of this Journal join us in congratulating Niels Bentzen Atkin BA, MRCS, LRCP, MD, DMRT, FIAC on his 90th birthday. Niels is one of the pioneers of human cytogenetics, most particularly tumour cytogenetics. Niels was one of the first to conduct DNA measurements of tumour cell nuclei and demonstrate that the cell-to-cell variation and the tumour-to-tumour variation were considerable and covered a wide ploidy range in most tumours (below diploid to over tetraploid) suggesting that the chromosome number varies and often increases in the process of malignant transformation. He later went on to show that this was in fact the case by making direct chromosome preparations from tumours and counting and characterizing the chromosomes.