Rudi and Gillian at Box Hill, Surrey

MORE THAN A LOVE AFFAIR — In 1960, Rudolf Vrba moved from Israel to England where he worked for seven years in the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit in Carshalton, Surrey, and for the Medical Research Council which was part of the NRU. He became a naturalized British subject on August 4, 1966. While at Carshalton, Vrba became romantically involved with his much younger research assistant, Gillian Bryant, born on July 20, 1942, but she declined his initial offer to go for coffee. About a year later, they became lovers; several years later she became pregnant, out-of-wedlock, with his child. Gillian Bryant was likely the first person to read I Cannot Forgive, seeing sections of it before it was published as a book. This website made contact with Gillian Bryant-Greenwood in 2024. Her recollections are made public here for the first time. Excerpts of letters by Vrba about this relationship will also be forthcoming.

GILLIAN BRYANT-GREENWOOD REMEMBERS RUDOLF VRBA

Rudi Vrba was a very important person in my life. I first worked with him as an undergraduate student when I was about 20. We were together for most of the time I was doing my Ph.D at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. We were in a relationship from the time I left his lab until he left the UK.

I knew Helena and Zuza very well when they were children, the four of us went camping together etc. When they came to Rudi from Birmingham I spent the weekends with them. When his mother came to visit, I spent time with her, too. I even visited and stayed with her and her husband in Bratislava.

I was extremely upset about Helena’s suicide. At the time, I was married and living in Hawaii, with one child. Not long before that, Helena had spent time with my family in Honolulu. I can still remember, so clearly, taking her from our house to the Honolulu airport and being shaken to my core by a feeling that I would not see her again. I almost turned the car around and took her back to my home. I have never had such a strong premonition. Unfortunately, I never did see her again.

I am 81 years old now. I am happy to talk to you about anything you might want to know. But I have to say I find it strangely and unexpectedly moving to talk about all of this now. Deep feelings never go away, even after having a wonderful life as a scientist and mother.

*

I was born in 1942 in the middle of a lovely summer (July), in the middle of the most beautiful Oxfordshire countryside, but at the same time, in the middle of the most horrific war in Europe.

Witney Blanket Hall 1721. Photo: Philip Bird.

I was born near a small town (Witney), known for its wool blankets. My father was in the RAF and my mother was taken out of London to give birth. She went to a large lovely old house (Freelands House), which had been taken over as a small maternity hospital for military wives. The owners had temporarily left for safer surroundings, but my mother told me that all their rooms and furniture were still there. In spite of this nice interlude, my mother and I returned to London and the bombing there.

Because my father was away and my father’s brother was also in the RAF, we lived with his wife and daughter in their small house in North London (Finchley). Most of my early life was spent in a tiny space under the stairs, with one small lamp waiting out the air-raids. I remember the deep drone of bombers in masses coming over to England, the sirens going (they use similar sirens here for emergency and they test them monthly- I hate it still!).

When the flying bombs started (today we would call them missiles) these took out whole blocks of houses and not just single properties. This was when children were then shipped en masse out of London to the countryside. Because I was too young for this, my mother and I were sent north to Cumberland and the Lake district.

We spent about 18 months there, living with a mean, childless couple in a tiny cottage. They certainly resented me. Although I was only about two years old, I do remember it. The lady was a midwife and my mother used to go to help her sometimes out in the boonies, where someone would give birth by candlelight.

Swan & Pyramids, Finchley, North London

I first saw my father when I was almost four years old. He was very lucky to survive, as he trained to be a pilot in South Africa, but failed his last flight test and was then retrained as a navigator. Almost all of his original squadron failed to return. His brother was a rear gunner and they had the highest mortality rate, but he survived, too. We lived with his wife and child in Finchley and I started my first school from there at five years old. I had another two schools within the first year because housing was so difficult to get in a severely bombed-out city.

We had to leave my uncle’s house because the two brothers came home and they didn’t get along. I was very competitive at an early age at school and liked to do well. I remained an only child and would have dearly liked to have a sister. My parents were quite poor. Life in the years after the war in London was very difficult and my parents struggled financially to meet the minimum needs. When I was six years old, we were lucky to get our own three-roomed flat in a very working class neighborhood of London. It was the first time that my parents had had any place of their own and we were so happy. They continued living there until shortly after I left for Honolulu in1968.

My father was a biomedical engineer and worked at University College Hospital. He was involved in the development of the first heart-lung machine. My father had had to leave school at age 16 as it was the Depression. He got all of his education subsequently at night school. When I was young he was out at least 3 nights a week. This allowed him to get better work and be more creative. It also allowed my parents to immigrate to the US, as there was a shortage of engineers here.

For years my parents wanted to leave the UK and sought opportunities in Australia, Canada and the USA. We were at one time set to go to Colorado, as my father accepted a job with an MD he worked with and who was leaving the UK. He was in Colorado arranging housing for his family and us and got killed by a car when crossing the street. The end of that opportunity.

Tottenham Highschool for Girls

My life in London as a child was dreary. The climate was terrible, dull, grey, cold and wet. I was often sick and caught terrible colds, as well as getting mumps, chicken pox and scarlet fever twice.  However, my parents loved each other and me, they did their very best for me. I had to attend public (in the US sense) schools. I was always near the top of my class if not actually the top. I graduated from Tottenham High School for girls.

My father often took me to the big museums in London, which were free. We went to the British Museum on Sundays, as he was very interested in Egyptology. I spent a lot of time walking the mummy halls with him. He treated me as a boy because he didn’t know much about young girls (he was one of three boys). I spent time with him at the War Museum and he told me a lot of things.

We also went to the Natural History Museum, my favorite and the Victoria and Albert Museum. My parents also took me to the ballet and symphony concerts, whenever they could afford it. I played violin at school and was selected for the Tottenham schools symphony orchestra. We had no telephone or car, we used the Tube and buses everywhere. We lived about 6 miles as the crow flies from the center of London. My father and I used to explore all the old neighborhoods, around the city, St. Paul’s etc. At that time, much of it was still bombed sites and piles of rubble. There were also some interesting old buildings in our own neighborhood. There was a Norman 11th century church tower just up the road. My father loved trains and he would take me to stand on an old iron bridge on the main line going from St Pancras to Scotland, we stood there as this huge iron beast came straight at us, under full steam. It tore a few feet beneath us and enveloped us in filth and steam, such was my father! My mother was very cross when we then came home so dirty.

My mother was also great, she wanted me to have ballet lessons, but was unable to afford it. She did a deal such that she cleaned the ballet teacher’s house in exchange for lessons for me. They wanted to get out of London to the countryside as often as possible and therefore acquired second hand bikes for us. We rode these on the main road on Sundays, with our lunches, northwards about 7 miles, which in those days was still rolling countryside. My father would get small books on birds, fungi, mosses, etc. and we would walk and bike for miles looking for things. I wanted to be a biologist from these early days.

When I finished high school, my botany teacher said that I should get further education. There was no money, of course, but I got a grant of 60 pounds a term to go to Brunel College to do a degree in Applied Biology. I could stay at home and commute on the tube for one hour across to the other side of London. This journey and the viruses I picked up in the process of being crammed in with so many people, took its toll, so I struggled with the work-load.

This four-year course turned out to be quite progressive. For the first three years at the college, I spent two terms at the college and then the third term, from Easter through to end of summer, at a research institute anywhere in England.

For the first such experience I went to a pest control company and learnt about wood-worm etc. and I decided the industrial setting was terrible.

My next experience was at the MRC Neuropsychiatric Research Unit at Carshalton, Surrey. I was only 20 and had no experience of academia, or how such research units normally function.

The director of the operation was a Dr Richter—a German name but I don’t know if he was German. I talked with him only once, when he interviewed me, after which he offered me the desired internship.

MRC Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, Carshalton (1963) Gillian Bryant 4th from left, top row, Derek Richter seated front/centre, Dr. Robert Balaz to his left, and Rudolf Vrba seated  front/right

I was not really that interested in biochemistry and metabolism, but you just had to go where you were placed. I got a room in a house with supper each night and could walk to work.

I was placed by the director to work with Rudi Vrba and his Indian research technician. There were lab bays and Rudi’s area was composed of two lab benches, one under a window and the other at right angles to it, the latter forming a barrier between his area and another investigator in the next bay.

The person in this next area was a Dr. Balaz, a Hungarian, and I don’t think Rudi got along with him very well. Neither do I think he got along with Richter. Rudi had a desk almost in the center of the lab, to one side, with its short side against the wall. Mostly, he would spend his time, when he was there, just reading scientific literature, while his Indian technician and I carried out the work.

There was a small room adjacent to the lab with equipment, such as balances for accurately weighing chemicals. When we started a major experiment, I remember working alongside Rudi, injecting mice etc. Otherwise, he tended to make sure we knew what we were doing and how, and leave us to it. I was therefore learning from the technician.

I would say that in general, Rudi came to work and went, without much interaction with anyone other than his technician and me. I got the impression then that he didn’t work very hard! In retrospect, I think he didn’t get along very well with any of the people there. But at that stage, I had nothing to compare this situation with. However, in the course of six months, we carried out one major experiment on glucose metabolism in the mouse brain.

A short paper was subsequently published in Nature. I think it was a one-person paper. Rudi sent me a signed copy after I left, but he did not acknowledge either his technician or me in the foot-note at the end. This would be normal procedure, rather than making them co-authors or just ignoring us, as he did.

[I kept that paper from England and had it until last summer, in 2023, when I shipped boxes from Honolulu to my home here on the Big Island and one box was “lost” or most likely stolen. It had some important items of my life’s work—of no interest to anyone else. I was very upset at losing something irreplaceable.]

Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Lincoln’s Inn Fields

For my third and final experience I went to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in central London (ICRF). This was the Spring of 1963. I loved the work there much more and decided then that I wanted to focus on endocrinology. It was around this period that I started a relationship with Rudi. It was about the same time as he just  got the proofs of “I Cannot Forgive” before it was published in 1964.

Late one afternoon in the lab, we were working together and Rudi asked me if I would like to have coffee with him after work. I was rather taken aback by this because I thought he was far too old for me. He was twenty years my senior and when you are twenty, someone who is forty seems quite ancient. I turned him down. I made some kind of excuse.

Later on, the following year, I was quite lonely being removed to this work situation far from my college friends. In a similar situation, when he asked again, I thought, “Why not?”

I had seen the tattooed number on his arm while we were working together. I knew what this was. My homeroom teacher in high school had one; she taught German at my school. I asked my parents about it and they explained.

My math teacher also had several fingers missing. He had been a prisoner of the Japanese during the war and had to participate in the building of the Burmese railway. This was an era when the older generation in Europe were still actively employed and interacted with the younger generation, so one learnt what these things meant and in so doing had an important lesson in recent history.

That first time we were together, outside of the lab, Rudi and I walked together to his apartment after work and chatted casually. His place was nice but terribly “sterile,” which I assumed to be because he was a bachelor and lived alone. We just had something to eat and drink, and then he walked me back to my lodgings. It was quite late in the evening. By then it was cold. I mentioned this and Rudi took my hand and put it into his pocket with his hand, and I thought this was very nice.

I believe it was during this first private meeting, he told me that he was divorced and had two daughters. It wasn’t long after this that I had to leave and return to my didactic studies.

Alan Bestic (left) seated next to Gillian and Rudi (standing) in Vrba’s London apartment.

I am not absolutely sure after all this time, but I think that I was the one who initiated contact again. I went to his apartment and he seemed very lonely. He told me about working with Alan Bestic on his book, I Cannot Forgive. By this time they had published a series of newspaper articles.

Rudi was having to relive his Auschwitz experiences in such detail at that time that I think he was very depressed. He was also having a very hard time with his ex-wife and the negotiations for him to see his daughters. As if this were not enough, he was seriously worried about his financial situation.

I was completely unable to help with any one of these issues, I was just an impoverished student. The only thing that I was able to do was to listen and commiserate. In fact, over the next year, at all of our meetings, he dominated the conversation, talking about these things, In retrospect, I think I was quite patient and understanding. I let him just talk.

The physical relationship that developed was the first for me. I had had several boyfriends, but I was extremely focused on my career and was most concerned about getting pregnant. The contraceptive pill had just appeared and was available, but being interested in endocrinology I was not sure that it was safe at that time and would not take it.

I felt that Rudi had been married and knew much more than I did and so he could prevent me from getting pregnant. At this point, I was staying with my girlfriend’s family. They lived close to the college and they kindly took me in. That meant I didn’t have to do the time-consuming travel every day if I had lived at home. It also meant that I didn’t have to explain where I was to my parents.

I was working hard as a serious student and the travel to and from Sutton on the tube, trains and walking was limited to the weekends. I would normally go to his place on Fridays, he would hide the key for me and I would often buy a fresh chicken that I would put in the oven for our supper. We developed an easy relationship during this period. For example, he said that his living room needed painting, so I said, “Let’s do it.”  I knew how to paint a room, as my parents and I had painted our apartment. I told him what to buy and the following weekend we did indeed wash down and paint the room. We were both very happy that it looked so good!

Over this period, I met some of his friends, including Elizabeth Hilton, the ex-wife of Sidney Hilton who had married Rudi’s ex-wife Gerta. Elizabeth was very nice to me. She was a physiology professor and we talked a good deal about this subject, her young daughter and, of course, her ex and Rudi’s ex. She was quite lonely and lived relatively near my parents. She used to drink red wine in the evenings and sometimes Rudi and I would join her, or I would even go by myself. She told me to get out of this relationship with Rudi and that he was no good for me. Of course, being stubborn and liking him a lot by that time, I refused to listen.

During my six-month internship at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, I was assigned to work in the protein chemistry section under the directorship of Dr. Frederick Greenwood. I was both terrified and excited over this opportunity. I was terrified that I would not be able to do the work properly and excited by being able to work in an area that I was most interested in. The lab was very active and friendly and I discussed all of this at the weekends with Rudi. It was a very different situation from that I experienced the year before, with him at Carshalton, which was so very insular by comparison.

During this period, I met Alan Bestic a couple of times while he was writing Rudi’s book. These were short meetings and I never really got to know him well. I understood that Rudi talked into a tape recorder and Alan then put it all onto paper in readable form. I did realize that a lot of alcohol went into this procedure and for Rudi a lot of cigarettes, too.

One weekend Rudi gave me chunks of the proofs of this book to read. I read most of it this way, but in bits and pieces rather than properly from start to finish. It did have a significant effect on me and the major thing it did was to cause me to make all sorts of excuses for him from that time forward.

The other people I met over this period were his daughters, Helena and Zuza. Our first meeting was in town at their favorite restaurant, which served pieces of fried chicken in a basket with French fries (chips). Usually, this was when they came for a weekend, which seemed a random time rather than a regular event.

Rudi would meet them from the train arriving from Birmingham, and he would take them for lunch or supper at their favorite place and then to a movie. I was surprised how young Zuza was, but they were both great girls. Once we got to know each other better, we had fun when they came sometimes at weekends.

I was the initiator of much of the fun stuff, like the camping trip. I took a week off work and borrowed a tent and all the items we needed for this. Rudi didn’t want them to see that we slept together, so we made another bed in the second bedroom, to which I had to retreat to early each morning. They used to rush in and jump into the bed with me, there was a lot of giggling and we used to lie there and chatter about all sorts of nonsense.

They would sleep together in the living room on the couch, which folded out into a large bed. I became very fond of them both and feel quite devastated now that I know that I have outlived them, which somehow seems all wrong. Of course, at that time, the age differences between us were quite small but also very significant. They undoubtedly wanted to tell me all sorts of things, but were very diplomatic about their own home-life, and I did not pry.

Helena’s 14th Birthday Party. Note the drawings by Mary Filer,  of Rudi in his lab on the wall.

We did one Christmas together and at least one birthday party. I do think it was very disturbing for both girls to come to London. I think it was unsettling and I suspect difficult for them.  I tried to make up for something I felt that was lacking and I don’t think that even now I can articulate exactly what that was, perhaps it was just some stability.

One thing I am certain about was that Rudi loved them both very deeply. He really loved them to visit with him and would do absolutely anything for them.

At one stage, during the first year of our relationship, Rudi had failed to contact me, as he usually did and I didn’t hear from him for several weeks. I didn’t know why. Then he suddenly called and invited me to his place, I asked if I could bring my girlfriend and her boyfriend, as both were interested in jobs in biochemistry and I thought it might be useful for them to talk to him. This also diluted my visit, as I would not be alone!

I got a huge shock when we arrived. A tall, blonde Canadian woman answered the door and acted as the hostess. It became rapidly clear to me that she was living there with him, but he had not mentioned this to me.

This lady turned out to be the Canadian artist who did some sketches of Rudi in the lab. They were all pinned up around the walls of his living room when the three of us paid this visit. We spent a short evening with Rudi and his Canadian lady and we left. I was in rather in a shocked state and very sad that my relationship with him was obviously over, but this seemed a cruel way to tell me.

In subsequent days I was both angry at him and sad. I really had nobody I wanted to talk to about this. I remember well going to see my father at his place of work. He recognized that I was in a bad state (I had not been eating or sleeping) and took me to his friends at University College Hospital. They were very kind and gave me a sedative and put me to bed in a single hospital room. I slept there all day until my father came to take me home. I did manage to pull myself up with my boot straps and got back into a normal routine.

Some weeks went by and I thought it was all over with Rudi, when one evening I got a phone call out of the blue. He asked me if I could meet him in town. I was not sure if I should go or why he wanted to see me. But I decided to go. I met him, we chatted as we walked and he suddenly hailed a cab and pulled me into it. I asked where we were going and he said, “to his place.”

I asked about the Canadian artist and he said that he was terribly relieved that she had left. Thus, our relationship started over again and, in retrospect, this was a very bad thing for me.

In September of 1964, I started my final complete year at university, with final exams at the end, which covered all four years of work. It was an arduous year, quite intense and hard work. I had little time at weekends, but still managed to see Rudi. However, I became more aware that he was drinking heavily and was seeing numerous other women. I raised the latter issue with him and he didn’t deny it.

This all became very uncomfortable for me, visiting him at his apartment with the evidence around me of his other “girlfriends.” For example, once when I was there, the wife of someone that he knew and I had met, knocked on the door, obviously expecting him to be alone. She was very flustered when she saw me and left abruptly.

I really should have walked away from him at this time, but this was too hard for me and it also meant not seeing Helena or Zuza again either.

At the end of my time there, at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, they offered me a position to do a Ph.D when I had finished college. I was incredibly excited by this prospect.

When I finished my exams, I took a short break and immediately started my PhD work. Rudi had certainly encouraged me to do a Ph.D. The project I started on failed to proceed as expected, thus I was given funds to go to Amsterdam to work at the Cancer Center there with the aim of trying to break through the problem.

I was there only a couple of weeks and otherwise my private life with Rudi continued. I just made one excuse after another for his behaviour. I was working hard and just letting things continue in a status quo situation. This went on into the second year of my Ph.D when my work took a turn for the better and I was suddenly cooking with gas!

At about this time, I realized that I had accidentally got pregnant. I felt quite ill and rotten and dragged myself to work. It took me some time to decide to go to my doctor and get a pregnancy test done, which came back positive.

I decided that I had to tell Rudi and I remember plucking up the courage one weekend to do this. I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be, but it was quite violent!  He shouted a lot and wanted to take me to get an abortion, but I refused. I was unable to abort a child of someone I loved, regardless that he didn’t return these feelings.

I knew that I had to tell Dr. Fred Greenwood, my Ph.D supervisor, and also my parents, of course. Dr. Greenwood and four of his MD post-doctoral fellows took me out to supper one evening, in order to persuade me to get an abortion, as the best option for me and my future. I explained my feelings to them and it ended with them all saying that they would help me as much as they could. My parents too, were sorry but said they would be supportive.

My father took Rudi out for dinner. He wanted to get him to agree to marriage, as it was difficult at that time for me being single and pregnant. I did not want to marry and neither did Rudi; we both knew that it would not work.

Little by little, Rudi thought about this and he became kinder and more helpful. He told me that his contract at the MRC unit was not being renewed and that he was having to leave the country for a job in Vancouver. He offered to pay the rent on his apartment for me and the child. This was very helpful because my parents had only a one-bedroomed flat. However, it was a long journey of over an hour one-way to the center of London, where I was doing my PhD.

Rudi also said that he would arrange for the daughter of a friend in Prague to come and help me by babysitting while I was at work. This girl was only 18 and had no child-care experience, but she wanted to come to England and learn English. Thus, things were more or less becoming clear as to how I might manage to finish my Ph.D, with a small baby. I was quite stressed by the situation, although I put on a brave face.

I began to show the pregnancy and was feeling a lot better, but not psychologically, as Rudi was drinking a lot, going to all kinds of parties and seeing many women. He no longer wanted anything to do with me, other than chat about his new job in Canada. I was surprised that he was enthusiastic about it because it meant leaving Helena and Zuza behind in England and I knew how much he cared about them.

Unfortunately, something went wrong with my pregnancy at six-and-a-half months and I went into labour. Our son had died in utero. My mother took me to the hospital in a cab, where I had a very late miscarriage. I was devastated and had to spend almost a week in hospital. Rudi never came to see me, but Dr. Greenwood did.

I went to the station in central London and saw Rudi off on the train, at the start of his journey to Vancouver. For several months, after he arrived in Canada, he wrote me long letters and was kind enough to pay for the rent. He then wrote and said that he could no longer afford to do this, so I found another young woman to share the apartment with me.

*

After completing my Ph.D in May of 1968, I agreed to go with Dr. Greenwood and a technician from his group to set up a lab in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Hawaii. I took a post-doctoral position. When I came to Hawaii, it was such a fantastic contrast to the back streets of London, where I grew up, that I wanted to have the son that I lost with Rudi.

My son Peter Keahi was born in 1970 and Fred was his father. He was married at the time. I wasn’t interested in marriage. [He later told me had had fallen in love with when he had visited me in the hospital in London.] My parents were a huge help; my mother was coming every day to look after him while I worked. Fred and I had an incredible relationship and eventually he persuaded me to marry him (after he got a divorce!) in 1976.

The turning point happened when he had to have a coronary bypass. After that, he told me it was something he wanted very much, so we slipped away and went downtown to a judge’s office and got married without telling anyone. We worked together, lived and loved together, and had a daughter too, until his death in 2000.

Fred had met Rudi through me. He, too, was a biochemist by training and was even nominated for the Nobel Prize. He would have got it, but one member of the three-person group of researchers died suddenly and it is only given to people living. Anyway, he was awarded the main prize by both the British and American endocrine societies, as well as several others for his work. The thing that he was most proud of doing was running 13 marathons.

Rudi did email me to send condolences upon Fred’s death. He had seen his obituary in the Biochemical society newsletter.

After a couple of years in Hawaii, I was awarded a prestigious Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the same time as my first NIH grant. Thus, my career was launched, since these awards led to a tenure track position. I kept continuous funding going for 35 years, training 16 PhD students, teaching both graduate and medical students and publishing over 130 peer reviewed papers.

Rudi came to Hawaii once, before he married Robin. He seemed to be at a dead-end and quite lonely. I am not sure of the date. But the reason for his visit, was to get over the death by suicide of a graduate student in Vancouver. I could tell by the way he told me about this graduate student that he was very shaken up. She had taken her life because of him.

I didn’t find this too surprising.

I believe this happened well before Helena’s suicide.

Dr. Gillian Bryant-Greenwood, Professor Emeritus of the Cell and Molecular Biology department of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, undertook forty years of research into the female hormone of relaxin. First publications on relaxin were in the 1970s with studies on the chemistry, structure and RIA of relaxin. In the 1980s her work focused on 125I binding studies and relaxin production by the ovarian follicle, and she began her research on relaxin in human decidua and fetal membranes. In the 1990s she proposed the idea of relaxin as a ‘local’ hormone and pioneered the concept that the corpus luteum does not have a monopoly on producing relaxin. She proposed that the mammary gland was a source of relaxin and suggested a role for relaxin in the preterm rupture of human fetal membranes. The major focus of her research over the past 20 years has been on human relaxin and the problem of preterm birth and paracrine communication in human decidua and fetal membranes. Dr. Bryant-Greenwood has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on relaxin alone and numerous invited reviews and book chapters. Of particular interest is a highly cited article in Endocrine Reviews entitled “Relaxin as a New Hormone” (Bryant-Greenwood, 1982) in which relaxin was proposed as a peptide analog of the prostaglandins and called a ‘new’ hormone based on local production and autocrine/ paracrine actions. More than 10 years later, a second Endocrine Reviews article was published entitled “Human Relaxins: Chemistry and Biology” (Bryant-Greenwood & Schwabe, 1994) that focused on molecular aspects of human relaxin and raised new questions about structure-function relationships and the evolution of relaxin.

On April 18, 1964,  a medical journal called “Nature,” published Vrba’s article named, “Utilization of Glucose Carbon In Vivo in the Mouse.” Though he failed to cite her as a research contributor to this article, he did send her a copy with a letter, dated 27th April 1964, in which he stated,

This work has been done during the time of your collaboration in this laboratory in 1963. I take this opportunity to express to you my sincere gratitude for your skillful and reliable assistance and for the active and valuable interest you have shown during the time of your collaboration in this work.

Utilization of Glucose Carbon In Vivo in the Mouse can be read here.