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Marco spoke up for the first time in a while. “And then you started working with her?”

Jonathan gave a small chuckle, tinged with something bittersweet. “Not right away. She didn’t believe in handing out opportunities lightly — she wanted to see if I was serious. A month later, she sent me a handwritten letter with a single line: ‘If you’re still interested, meet me in Zurich on July 10th."

James raised his eyebrows. “And did you?”

“I did,” Jonathan replied, his voice quiet. “Took the train across three borders with little more than a suitcase full of drafts and an old spectrometer manual. That summer was the most intense and illuminating period of my life. We worked twelve-hour days, sometimes more. She challenged everything I thought I knew about molecular behavior. And after that summer, I continued working with her — right up until she came here."

James then asked, with curiosity in his eyes. “That's great for you. and did you publish any research articles with her?”

Jonathan gave a small nod. “Yes. Quite a few, actually. Those years were productive — exciting. We were pushing boundaries no one else dared to touch.”

He stood up slowly and walked to a nearby cabinet, opening a drawer filled with neatly organized folders and papers. After a moment of flipping through pages, he pulled out a few journal volumes and handed them to James.

James took the papers carefully and began scanning the titles — dense, technical, but impressive. "On the Energy Distribution of Reactive Intermediates," "Infrared Spectroscopy in Gas-Phase Reactions," "A Note on Transition State Asymmetry.”

As he turned a few pages in, something caught his attention. His brow furrowed. “These are all under her name alone,” he said slowly. “You’re not listed as a co-author, not even for a single one of them. Just… mentioned in the acknowledgements.”