Guillemin

Remi Guillemin, head of watches for Europe and the Americas for auction house Christie’s, declined to identify the buyer, but said that five watches in the Ruthenium collection — a boxed set — were purchased by the same buyer.

Roger Guillemin, a neuroscientist who was a co-discoverer of the unexpected hormones with which the brain controls many bodily functions, died on Wednesday at a senior living facility in San Diego.

The second competition began shortly afterward when Wylie Vale Jr., Dr. Guillemin’s longtime collaborator and protégé, set up a rival laboratory on the same campus at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, where both men worked, plunging Dr. Guillemin yet another period of intense scientific struggle.

Dr. Guillemin’s career was marked by two spectacular competitions that ruffled the staid world of endocrinological research.

"������ makes it truly unique is that it is really one of the most recognizable memorabilia Rolex that has ever surfaced at auction," said Remi Guillemin, head of watches in Europe at Christie's.