It is now known that the hormones of the adrenal gland are essential to controlling many challenges to the human body, from maintaining a proper balance between water and salt to responding to stress. Tadeus Reichstein is one of those responsible for this knowledge; Edward Kendall and Philip Hench also played an important role in these efforts, and the three men shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Reichstein's work has had effects throughout medicine--in the treatments of Addison's disease and rheumatoid arthritis, for example, and in the understanding of the fundamental biochemical processes of steroid hormone metabolism.

The eldest son of engineer Gustava Reichstein and his wife, Isidor, Reichstein was born on July 20, 1897, near Warsaw in Poland. After moving first to Kiev in the Ukraine and then to Berlin, the family settled in Zürich and became Swiss citizens. Tadeus attended the Eidgenössiche...