Dr. Tadeus Reichstein, a Swiss chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in medicine with two Americans for their work with cortisone, died Thursday at his home in Basel, Switzerland. He was 99.
In the 1930's and 1940's, Dr. Reichstein isolated several biologically active substances including corticosterone, the anti-inflammatory agent now known as cortisone, from hormones produced in the adrenal glands, which are located above the kidneys.
Dr. Reichstein studied organic chemistry at the Zurich Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1922. After a brief time in industry, he returned to the technical institute as a lecturer. In 1933, he had his first great success when he developed a process for synthesizing Vitamin C that helped lead to its mass production.
In the mid-1930's he began his pioneering work on the hormones produced in the adrenal glands. By 1937 Dr. Reichstein had isolated corticosterone.
At the same time, similar independent research on cortisone was being done in America by Prof. Edward C. Kendall at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. In the 1940's, he and Dr. Philip S. Hench, his colleague at the clinic, began testing cortisone, which Dr. Kendall had named Compound E, as a treatment for arthritis.Continue reading the main story
One of Dr. Reichstein's assistants, Dr. Marguerite Steiger, subsequently synthesized a form of cortisone that was named deoxy-corticosterone. At the time it proved useful in the treatment of Addison's disease, a condition in which the adrenal glands do not produce enough hormones.
In 1938, Dr. Reichstein joined the faculty of the University of Basel, where he continued his research. By 1946, he and his assistants had isolated 29 different steroids produced by the adrenal glands.
In 1950, Doctors Reichstein, Kendall and Hench were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for ''their discoveries concerning the suprarenal cortex hormones, their structure and biological effects.''
Dr. Reichstein retired from the University of Basel in 1967, but remained active in research until recently.
In 1992, he was among 63 Nobel laureates to sign an appeal to the world's governments to use their influence to end fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Tadeus Reichstein was born July 20, 1897, in Wloclawek, Poland. His family lived in Kiev, Ukraine, and Berlin before settling in Zurich in 1905. They became Swiss citizens in 1914.
Among his many professional affiliations, Dr. Reichstein was a Fellow of Royal Society in London and an international member the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. Dr. Reichstein, who often spoke of himself as ''a devoted gardener of African plants,'' was also an honorary member of the American Fern Society.
He is survived by a brother, Ignaz Reichstein; a daughter, Marguerite Rosset, and three grandchildren.Continue reading the main story