Tadeus Reichstein

Tadeus Reichstein (1897-1996), Polish-born Swiss chemist and Nobel Prize winner who isolated and identified important hormones produced by the adrenal glands. Reichstein's research, in addition to elucidating the biochemical structure of these hormones, helped open the way to their use in treatments for a variety of diseases. For this work Reichstein shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with American biochemist Edward C. Kendall and American physician Philip Showalter Hench.

Born in Włocławek, Poland (near Warsaw, in what was then part of Russia), young Reichstein moved with his family to Zürich, Switzerland; they became Swiss citizens in 1914. Reichstein received a degree in chemical engineering in 1920 from the Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Switzerland, (known in English as the Federal Institute of Technology). Two years later, he earned his Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry, also from the ETH. Reichstein remained there as a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry until 1938, when he moved to the University of Basel, where he spent the rest of his career.

In the late 1920s Reichstein's early research centered on coffee, as he worked to determine the chemical components that give coffee its flavor and aroma. In 1933 he become one of the first chemists to synthesize ascorbic acid, better known as vitamin C. Later he turned his attention to the chemical substances produced by the body's adrenal glands. Sitting atop the kidneys, the two adrenal glands secrete a variety of hormones that perform important functions, such as maintaining a proper balance between water and salt in the body. Adrenal hormones also help the body react to sudden stress by raising the heartbeat.

Reichstein began his research in the mid-1930s, extracting chemicals from the adrenal glands of cattle. He had expected to isolate a single hormone. Instead, he found many different compounds. The chemical structure of these hormones proved to belong to the chemical group known as steroids, characterized by linked rings based on carbon molecules. By 1942 Reichstein and his colleagues had isolated 27 hormones—known collectively as corticosteroids—from the adrenals. Along with determining their structure and their activity in the body, Reichstein developed more efficient and economical means of synthesizing the hormones. By the late 1940s research on adrenal hormones was beginning to have important medical consequences. In the United States, Edward Kendall and Philip Showalter Hench were demonstrating that one such hormone, cortisone, seemed to interfere with the biochemical processes that cause tissue to become inflamed. Cortisone brought dramatic improvements to patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the joints. Today corticosteroids continue to serve as treatments for inflammatory disease and other conditions.

Later in his career, Reichstein investigated the biochemical properties of plants. He was one of the first to realize that the plants in tropical rain forests may hold cures for many diseases.