Tadeusz Reichstein

Biography

Tadeusz Reichstein was born on July 20, 1897, in Włocławek, which was then part of the Russian Empire and is now in Poland. He spent a significant part of his career in Switzerland, earning recognition as a Polish-Swiss scientist. He studied and trained in chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, known as ETH Zurich, where he became a prominent chemist of the twentieth century. He passed away on August 1, 1996, in Basel, living nearly a century and witnessing many changes in chemistry and medicine, some of which his work contributed to.

Reichstein is most famous for his research on adrenal cortex hormones, which led to the discovery and synthesis of cortisone and related steroid hormones. During the 1930s and 1940s, he identified several compounds from the adrenal gland and determined their chemical structures. This involved complex analytical chemistry, needing large amounts of biological material to extract small amounts of active substances. His work earned him the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine shared with Edward Calvin Kendall and Philip Showalter Hench, who showed cortisone's powerful effects in treating rheumatoid arthritis.

Besides his work on cortisone, Reichstein significantly contributed to the chemistry of carbohydrates and plant natural products. In the 1930s, he developed an early industrial method to synthesize ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, making it widely and commercially available for the first time. This method, known as the Reichstein process, laid the foundation for mass production of vitamin C for many years. He married Henriette Louise Quarles van Ufford, and they settled in Basel, where Reichstein pursued his long academic career at the University of Basel.

In his later years, Reichstein focused on pteridophytes, a group of vascular plants including ferns. He became an avid botanical collector and extensively published on fern taxonomy and chemistry, adding valuable specimens and studies to herbaria and botanical literature. This work showed his wide-ranging curiosity and dedication to detailed observation in different fields. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1952, recognizing his esteemed place in the international scientific community.

Throughout his life, Reichstein received many honors. He was awarded the Marcel Benoist Prize in 1947, and that same year, the University of Paris granted him an honorary doctorate. He received the Centenary Prize in 1952, the Cameron Prize from the University of Edinburgh, and in 1968, the Copley Medal, one of the oldest and most esteemed scientific awards, given by the Royal Society. These awards covered chemistry, medicine, and the natural sciences, showing the wide scope of his contributions.