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Portrait of Tadeus Reichstein
Photo: ETH Zürich, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv · CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine · 1950

Tadeus Reichstein

He helped decode the adrenal hormones behind cortisone and Addison's treatment, and found the first practical way to mass-produce vitamin C.

The Nobel citation: “for their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects”
Born
July 20, 1897, Wloclawek, Poland
Died
August 1, 1996, Basel, Switzerland
Shared with
Edward C. Kendall, Philip S. Hench
Affiliation at the time
Basel University, Switzerland

Medicine prize

1950

Shared with 2 other laureates.

Age that year

53years

Born in 1897.

Headline credited impact

24,000–100,000lives saved

People with Addison's disease (primary adrenal insufficiency) kept alive by adrenal hormone replacement, 1940-2025. How it was built

Sources cited

27

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • At about eight he saw pogrom victims in the streets of Kiev; his father, fearing for the children, moved the family to Switzerland.
  • A drowned fruit fly helped: bacteria on its leg turned sorbitol into sorbose, the key step in his vitamin C process, which industry still builds on.
  • His team pulled 29 closely related steroids out of cattle adrenal glands, where they exist in tiny traces; only six had hormone activity, cortisone among them.
  • In the late 1930s a Polish-born Jew could hardly get a full professorship in Switzerland; only the University of Basel offered him a chair, in 1938.
  • In retirement he turned mostly to ferns, publishing more than 100 papers on them, and kept up his research into his nineties. He died at 99.

The breakthrough

Isolating the adrenal cortex hormones and making them in the lab (1934-1953)

Your adrenal glands sit on top of your kidneys. Their outer layer, the cortex, makes hormones you cannot live without: when it is destroyed, as in Addison's disease, people die without treatment. In the early 1930s nobody knew what these hormones were. From 1934 Reichstein and his longtime assistant Joseph von Euw set out to find them. The job was brutal. A ton of cattle adrenal glands gave only about a kilogram of crude extract, and the hormones in it were scarce and so alike that they crystallized together. Imagine searching a truckload of sand for a few grains of each of 29 slightly different shades, without a microscope. By patient chemical separation his team isolated 29 related compounds and worked out their exact structures. By turning them into molecules that were already known, he proved they were all steroids, the chemical family of the sex hormones and vitamin D. Six were active hormones, including corticosterone and cortisone. In 1937 he and his co-worker M. Steiger made one of them, desoxycorticosterone, from a related steroid. It was the first adrenal hormone produced in amounts doctors could use. Knowing where the oxygen atoms sat in these molecules, which he and Kendall worked out, showed chemists the road to making cortisone in factories. In 1953, with Sylvia Simpson, James Tait and industry chemists, he isolated the last major one, aldosterone, which controls the body's salt balance.[2],[3],[4],[8],[11],[12]

“I possess no more than a layman’s knowledge of either medicine or physiology.”
Tadeus Reichstein, Opening of his Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1950, on sharing the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with the physician Philip Hench and the biochemist Edward Kendall.[3]

What it meant for humanity

Addison's disease, in which the adrenal glands fail, was once fatal, and the first extracts made from animal glands gave uneven results. Desoxycorticosterone, which Reichstein first made in 1937, changed that. In 1940 a Boston team led by George Thorn reported that it corrected the dangerous salt imbalance in 30 patients, and a French medical historian credits it with securing the survival of people with Addison's disease. Once cortisone and hydrocortisone became available, doctors could replace both kinds of missing hormone. In a Norwegian registry of 811 patients diagnosed since 1943, overall death rates are close to normal, although young patients and those who suffer adrenal crises remain at risk. The structures that Reichstein and Kendall worked out also opened the road to making cortisone in factories. When Mayo Clinic doctors showed in 1948 and 1949 that cortisone could calm rheumatoid arthritis, it launched a family of steroid medicines, from prednisone to dexamethasone, used for arthritis and other inflammatory diseases, skin conditions and neurological emergencies. In 2020 the RECOVERY trial found that cheap dexamethasone cut deaths among the sickest COVID-19 patients, and the trial reports an estimate that it saved about one million lives worldwide within nine months. His other large legacy is vitamin C. His synthesis of 1933-34, which used bacteria for one step, was the first practical way to make the vitamin in bulk. It was the main industrial route for more than 60 years, and today's fermentation methods still build on it. Vitamin C made this way goes into medicines, foods, drinks, cosmetics and animal feed.

  • In 1937 he and M. Steiger made desoxycorticosterone from a related steroid, the first adrenal hormone made in treatment-sized amounts; a 1940 Boston study found it restored salt balance in 30 Addison's patients.[3],[4],[11],[12]
  • In a Norwegian registry of 811 people diagnosed with Addison's disease from 1943 to 2005, the overall death rate was close to the general population's (ratio 1.15, not a statistically clear difference).[14]
  • In 1947 his institute sent two assistants to West Africa for nearly nine months to seek Strophanthus vines as a raw material for cortisone. That trip failed, but such seeds later supplied cortisone makers for about two years.[3],[12]
  • With Sylvia Simpson and James Tait he isolated aldosterone in 1953, crystallizing 21 mg of the salt-controlling hormone from 500 kg of cattle adrenal glands.[2],[8],[11]
  • Dexamethasone, a synthetic relative of the cortisone family first used in 1958, saved an estimated one million COVID-19 patients in the nine months after the RECOVERY trial's June 2020 result.[12],[18],[19]
  • Hoffmann-La Roche took up his vitamin C process in 1934. It stayed the main industrial route for over 60 years, and today's methods, used by Chinese firms that make over 80% of world supply, still build on it.[22],[23],[24]

Impact in numbers

Reichstein's work is basic chemistry that others turned into medicine, so most of its value cannot honestly be counted. We record two slices. The more direct one is people with Addison's disease who survived because doctors could replace their missing adrenal hormones, starting with the desoxycorticosterone he first made in 1937. We model 240,000 to 1 million such lives since 1940, mostly in richer countries, and credit him with 10%, because Kendall, Merck's chemists and the doctors who worked out the treatment were just as essential. The second is a distant ripple: dexamethasone's role in COVID-19, credited to him at half a percent. Much more resists numbers: the patients given steroid drugs for arthritis, skin and other inflammatory diseases, whose benefits come mixed with serious side effects; the discovery of aldosterone, which explains how the body controls salt; and his vitamin C process, the main source of the world's vitamin C for more than 60 years. We found no reliable totals for these, and none for harms from steroid side effects, so we describe them in words.

HealthFundamental scienceFood

Each number is the laureate’s credited share of a real-world outcome, cumulative to 2025. The whole outcome, the share of credit, and the reasoning are shown so you can check the arithmetic. Outcomes shared with other laureates are counted once on the impact page.

  • Low confidenceDirectModeledHealth

    People with Addison's disease (primary adrenal insufficiency) kept alive by adrenal hormone replacement, 1940-2025

    24,000–100,000

    lives saved, credited share

    That is 10% of 240,000–1 million lives saved since 1940.

    How this number was built

    Untreated Addison's disease was fatal (s4, s13); treated patients now have near-normal survival (Norway 1943-2005: SMR 1.15, s14), though crises still kill some (s27). Autoimmune Addison's incidence 4-6 per million a year (s15), about 70% of primary insufficiency in rich countries (s16). High-income population-years (UN via OWID, s17; 2024-25 held at 2023): 1950-2025 = 87.3B; 1940-2025 = 95.0B. Low: 87.3B x 4/M = 349,000 cases x 70% assumed diagnosed and treated = 244,000, rounded to 240,000. High: 95.0B x 8.6/M (6/0.7) = 814,000, plus upper-middle-income 2000-2025 (74.2B) x 4/M = 297,000; 1.11M x 90% = 1.0M. Excludes secondary insufficiency and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Share 0.1: he made DOCA, the first usable replacement hormone, and helped decode cortisone, but Kendall, Merck's synthesis, fludrocortisone and clinicians such as Thorn were also essential.[4],[12],[13],[14],[15],[16],[17],[27]

    Sources: NobelPrize.org; Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology; Histoire des Sciences Medicales, via PubMed; European Journal of Endocrinology, via PubMed; Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, via PubMed Central; BJOG, via PubMed Central; Our World in Data (UN World Population Prospects and other sources); The Lancet, via PubMed

  • Low confidenceRippleModeledHealth

    Lives saved by dexamethasone treatment of severe COVID-19 worldwide, 2020-2025

    3,100–13,350

    lives saved, credited share

    That is 0.5% of 620,000–2.7 million lives saved since 2020.

    How this number was built

    Aguas et al. (s19) projected dexamethasone would save 650,000 lives (90% CI 240,000-1.4M) in Jul-Dec 2020, or 390,000 (130,000-1.0M) if it gives no benefit without oxygen. Reported COVID-19 deaths in that period were 1.38M (WHO via OWID, s20), so lives saved per reported death run from 0.094 (conservative lower bound) to 0.47. RECOVERY reports about 1M saved in the nine months after its June 2020 result (s18), when 2.48M deaths were reported: 0.40. From 16 Jun 2020 to end-2025, 6.63M deaths were reported. Low: 0.094 x 6.63M = 0.62M. High: 0.40 x 6.63M = 2.67M. Both bounds now cover the same 2020-2025 window; the range stays wide because benefit where oxygen is scarce is unproven. Share 0.005: dexamethasone (1958) is a synthetic relative of the hormones Reichstein and Kendall decoded, but its fluorine and methyl changes and the RECOVERY trial were others' work.[12],[18],[19],[20]

    Sources: Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology; RECOVERY Trial, University of Oxford; Nature Communications, via PubMed Central; Our World in Data

The double edge

No controversy about Reichstein's own conduct is documented, but the medicines built on his hormones carry real costs. Cortisone arrived amid hype in 1949, when a film of an arthritis patient rising from a wheelchair spread widely and the press spoke of a cure. Early doses were set by guesswork and often too high; within about a decade doctors had described the toll of long-term steroid use: a rounded face, fluid retention and high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, thinning bones and spinal fractures, cataracts, depression and other mental changes, and shrunken adrenal glands that make stopping the drug dangerous. The Nobel presenter warned of side effects, some serious, in 1950. Steroids also weaken defenses against infection. In a review of 80 cases of a deadly fungal infection, mucormycosis, in COVID-19 patients, most had received systemic steroids and most had uncontrolled diabetes; about half died. His vitamin C process has an environmental cost too: its chemical steps use harmful solvents like acetone, consume much energy and create costly waste, one reason cleaner fermentation steps have largely replaced its chemical ones. We found no published totals for these harms that could fairly be credited to his work, so we give no numbers.

  • Moderate

    Side effects of long-term steroid treatment

    Studies from 1950 to 1960 found that months of cortisone or its successors caused swelling and a rounded face, high blood pressure, ulcers (31% of steroid-treated arthritis patients versus 9% of untreated ones in one X-ray study), bone loss and fractures, cataracts, psychiatric changes and adrenal shutdown that made withdrawal hazardous.[4],[12]

  • Minor

    Hype and overuse when cortisone arrived

    After Mayo Clinic films showed arthritis patients walking again, the press hailed cortisone as a cure despite its discoverers' warnings that it was experimental and not curative. Early doctors picked doses by guesswork, often higher than later proved necessary.[11],[12]

  • Moderate

    Steroids and deadly fungal infections in COVID-19

    Dexamethasone saves the sickest COVID-19 patients but can raise the risk of mould infections. In a review of 80 cases of COVID-19-associated mucormycosis, about half from India, 79% had received systemic corticosteroids and most had uncontrolled diabetes; 49% died.[21]

  • Minor

    Pollution from the chemical steps of the vitamin C process

    The Reichstein process relies on several chemical steps that use harmful solvents like acetone, need high temperature, pressure and energy, and create costly waste. Cleaner two-step fermentation methods were developed partly to reduce these problems.[22],[23]

Against the odds

Reichstein was born in 1897 in Włocławek, in the part of Poland ruled by the Russian Empire, which limited where Jews could live and how many could study. His father was one of the few Polish Jews admitted to the Technical Institute in St Petersburg, and later ran an engineering business in Kiev. There, police regularly raided homes to find and expel Jews who lacked residence permits. Pogroms swept the empire in 1905. In Kiev that October, rioters raged for three days while army and police failed to stop them, and soldiers even shielded them from Jewish self-defense groups. Tadeus, then about eight, heard victims screaming and saw wounded and dead people in the streets. His father decided the children were no longer safe and moved the family to Switzerland, where relatives fleeing the same violence crowded into their home. The First World War cut his father off from his business in Kiev and wiped out the family's savings, and his mother turned their house into a boarding house. Switzerland was safer but not free of prejudice. In the 1930s antisemitic Frontist groups agitated openly, and colleagues recalled anti-Jewish hostility at ETH Zurich. When a patent dispute between sponsors forced Reichstein out of his Zurich lab in 1938, he found that almost no Swiss university would give a full chair to a Polish-born Jew, even one who was a Swiss citizen and army veteran. Only Basel, then run by anti-fascist social democrats and liberals, did.

  • —

    Quota

    Russian rule let only a handful of Polish Jews into the Technical Institute in St Petersburg. His father won a place but got almost no financial help and paid his way by tutoring.[7]

  • —

    Discrimination

    In Kiev, where the family lived, Jews needed special permission to reside. Right up to the First World War, police made night raids to find and expel Jews who lacked it.[25]

  • 1905

    Persecution

    Pogroms swept the Russian Empire in 1905; in Kiev, in October, rioters ran free for three days as army and police failed to stop them. Tadeus, then about eight, heard people screaming and saw wounded and dead people in the street.[7],[8],[25]

  • 1906

    Exile

    Convinced that repeated anti-Jewish violence made Russia unsafe for his children, his father emigrated with the family to Switzerland. They left Tadeus at a harsh boarding school in Jena, partly because their Zurich flat was full of relatives fleeing the same violence; he joined them in 1907. At his Nobel banquet he named growing up in Switzerland first among the undeserved gifts of his life.[5],[7],[10],[11]

  • 1914

    Poverty

    The First World War cut his father off from Kiev, costing him his business, capital and savings; he became bedridden, and the family survived by turning their home into a boarding house.[6],[7]

  • 1920

    Discrimination

    From 1920 to 1936 the city of Zurich had special naturalization rules that discriminated against Jews from Eastern Europe, and in the 1930s antisemitic Frontist groups campaigned openly. The Reichsteins had become Swiss citizens in 1914, before these rules.[7],[26]

  • 1938

    Discrimination

    Forced to leave ETH Zurich over a patent conflict, he found that in the late 1930s it was almost impossible for a Polish-born Jew to be appointed full professor at a Swiss university. Only Basel, backed by its anti-fascist education chief Fritz Hauser, offered him a chair.[6],[7],[8],[11]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishIdentified as Jewish, secular

Reichstein was the eldest of five sons of Jewish parents, the engineer Isidor Reichstein and Gustava Brockmann. The family left the Russian Empire to escape anti-Jewish violence. Swiss and German national biographies record him as Jewish. A Basel university history describes him as tolerant but not at all religious, and says he always saw himself as Swiss. He married Henriette Louise Quarles van Ufford, from a Dutch noble family, in 1927. He kept ties with Israel: Chaim Weizmann repeatedly urged him to settle there, and although he declined, he visited and lectured in Jerusalem and in the 1960s studied grasshopper toxins with the Israeli zoologist Lev Fishelson.[2],[6],[7],[8],[9],[10]

Key dates

  1. July 20, 1897

    Born in Włocławek, in Russian-ruled Poland, the eldest of five sons of Jewish parents.[1],[2],[7]

  2. 1905

    Witnesses the aftermath of pogroms in Kiev, where his father runs an engineering business serving sugar-processing plants.[7],[8],[25]

  3. 1907

    After two years at a harsh boarding school in Jena, joins his family, who had left Russia for Switzerland, near Zurich.[2],[7],[10]

  4. 1914

    Becomes a Swiss citizen with his four brothers and is called up for Swiss army service when the First World War begins.[7],[10]

  5. 1922

    Earns his doctorate at ETH Zurich under Hermann Staudinger, then spends nine years analyzing the aroma of roasted coffee.[2],[10]

  6. 1933

    Synthesizes vitamin C, independently of Norman Haworth's group in Britain.[2],[10]

  7. 1934

    Publishes with A. Grüssner a practical vitamin C route that uses bacteria for one step, taken up by Hoffmann-La Roche; starts adrenal hormone work with Joseph von Euw.[3],[7],[8],[22],[23]

  8. 1937

    With M. Steiger, makes desoxycorticosterone from a related steroid; it is soon used to treat Addison's disease.[3],[4],[11],[12]

  9. 1938

    After a patent conflict ends his post in Zurich, becomes professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at Basel, the one Swiss university willing to appoint him.[2],[6],[11]

  10. 1950

    Shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Kendall and Philip Hench; at the banquet he credits the medical uses his American colleagues found, not his own merit.[1],[4],[5]

  11. 1953

    With Sylvia Simpson, James Tait and industry chemists, isolates aldosterone, the adrenal hormone that controls salt balance.[2],[10],[11]

  12. 1967

    Retires and turns to the study of ferns, eventually publishing more than 100 papers on them.[7],[10]

  13. 1968

    Receives the Royal Society's Copley Medal.[10]

  14. August 1, 1996

    Dies in Basel at the age of 99.[1],[2],[7]

Sources

  1. 1.Tadeus Reichstein - Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
  2. 2.Tadeus Reichstein - Biographical · NobelPrize.org (from Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942-1962, Elsevier, 1964), 1964
  3. 3.Chemistry of the adrenal cortex hormones (Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1950) · NobelPrize.org, 1950
  4. 4.The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1950 - Award ceremony speech by Professor G. Liljestrand · NobelPrize.org, 1950
  5. 5.Tadeus Reichstein - Banquet speech (in German), 10 December 1950 · NobelPrize.org, 1950
  6. 6.Reichstein, Tadeus (Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography entry by Michael Kessler) · Charles Scribner's Sons, via Encyclopedia.com, 2008
  7. 7.Tadeus Reichstein (July 20, 1897 - August 1, 1996) · University of Basel history project (Historisches Seminar Basel), 2010
  8. 8.Tadeus Reichstein (1897-1996): Vitamin C, the Hormones of the Adrenal Cortex, Ferns and Insects (Weintraub B., The Israel Chemist and Engineer, issue 2, pp. 46-49) · Israel Chemical Society, 2016
  9. 9.Reichstein, Tadeusz (entry by Marcel H. Bickel) · Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), 2010
  10. 10.Reichstein, Tadeus(z) (entry by Christoph Tamm, Neue Deutsche Biographie 21) · Deutsche Biographie (Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), 2003
  11. 11.History of Adrenal Research: From Ancient Anatomy to Contemporary Molecular Biology (Miller W.L., White P.C., Endocr Rev 44:70-116) · Endocrine Reviews, via PubMed Central, 2023
  12. 12.History of the development of corticosteroid therapy (Benedek T.G., Clin Exp Rheumatol 29 Suppl 68:S5-S12) · Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology, 2011
  13. 13.Discovery of mineralocorticoid hormones (Hazard J., Hist Sci Med 38:441-448; in French) · Histoire des Sciences Medicales, via PubMed, 2004
  14. 14.Normal overall mortality rate in Addison's disease, but young patients are at risk of premature death (Erichsen M.M. et al., Eur J Endocrinol 160:233-237) · European Journal of Endocrinology, via PubMed, 2009
  15. 15.Work Loss and Income Before and After Diagnosis of Addison's Disease: A Population-Based Longitudinal Study (Stergianos S. et al.) · Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, via PubMed Central, 2026
  16. 16.Pregnancy Outcomes in Women With Primary Adrenal Insufficiency: Data From a Multicentre Cohort Study (Cauldwell M. et al.) · BJOG, via PubMed Central, 2025
  17. 17.Population (historical estimates): high-income and upper-middle-income countries · Our World in Data (UN World Population Prospects and other sources), 2024
  18. 18.RECOVERY trial celebrates two-year anniversary of life-saving dexamethasone result · RECOVERY Trial, University of Oxford, 2022
  19. 19.Potential health and economic impacts of dexamethasone treatment for patients with COVID-19 (Aguas R. et al., Nat Commun 12:915) · Nature Communications, via PubMed Central, 2021
  20. 20.Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths by world region (WHO data) · Our World in Data, 2026
  21. 21.The emergence of COVID-19 associated mucormycosis: a review of cases from 18 countries (Hoenigl M. et al., Lancet Microbe 3:e543-e552) · The Lancet Microbe, via PubMed Central, 2022
  22. 22.Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for direct production of vitamin C from D-glucose (Tian Y.S. et al., Biotechnol Biofuels Bioprod 15) · Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts, via PubMed Central, 2022
  23. 23.Strain Development, Substrate Utilization, and Downstream Purification of Vitamin C (Tucaliuc A. et al., Processes 10:1595) · Processes (MDPI), via the LAPSE repository, 2022
  24. 24.Industrial production of L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and D-isoascorbic acid (Pappenberger G., Hohmann H.P., Adv Biochem Eng Biotechnol 143:143-188) · Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology, via PubMed, 2014
  25. 25.Kiev (Encyclopaedia Judaica entry) · Encyclopaedia Judaica, via Encyclopedia.com
  26. 26.Antisemitismus (entry by Gaby Knoch-Mund and Jacques Picard) · Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), 2009
  27. 27.Adrenal insufficiency (Husebye E.S. et al., Lancet 397:613-629) · The Lancet, via PubMed, 2021

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 12 corrections made. How we check

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