Peter Ell: portrait of an Editor

Excerpt

Peter Ell is a true European, proud of being part of the old continent, but, in Portuguese seafarer tradition, open to the elsewhere, the other, the unknown. He has mastered several European languages, which allows him to speak with many of us in our mother tongue. He not only speaks various languages, but has also integrated the German, Portuguese and English cultures. This multiculturalism allowed him to play a pivotal role as secretary of the Linking Committee between 1984 and 1988 that was mandated by the two former societies, the European Nuclear Medicine Society and the Society of Nuclear Medicine Europe, to create a unique European Society of Nuclear Medicine. This process took several years and was replete with apprehensions, hopes, uncertainties and diverging opinions, but it finally led to the organisation of common European Nuclear Medicine Congresses. The first of them, held in Helsinki in 1984, laid the foundation for the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM). No wonder, then, that in 1986 Peter Ell was elected as the first secretary of the newly founded EANM and that, after holding this position from 1987 to 1993, he was elected as the EANM president. He held this position between 1994 and 1996. …