Gottfried Schatz (1936–2015)—mitochondrial pioneer and ambassador for science

Abstract

Gottfried (“Jeff”) Schatz pioneered the field of mitochondrial biogenesis and many of his discoveries on how mitochondria form and proliferate can be found in the textbooks of today's students. However, Jeff was much more than an unusually gifted scientist and mentor. He was a brilliant speaker, a talented musician, a successful essayist and novelist, a tireless ambassador for basic science, and a deeply cultured person. With his passing on 1 October 2015, biological science has lost one of its most visible advocates, and many of us have lost a remarkable and warm‐hearted friend. Jeff was born in 1936 in a small Austrian village near the Hungarian border but soon moved to Graz, where he studied chemistry while also pursuing his second passion as a violinist. Music remained a constant pleasure throughout his life. Following his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Graz, he joined the University of Vienna, where he began studying mitochondria in yeast, inspired by the work of David Green. In 1964, he demonstrated using biochemical fractionation that mitochondria contain their own DNA. This seminal finding provided the framework for his research for the next four decades, during which he systematically deciphered how mitochondrial proteins …