Reichstein, Tadeusz

In 1943, after being awarded the D.Sc. degree, Jeanloz was appointed as Research Associate, first with Meyer and then with Tadeusz Reichstein, Nobel Laureate for his work on steroid hormones. With Reichstein he studied the chemistry of deoxy sugars, some of which are constituents of these hormones, and developed3 a new method for the assay of these sugars. In 1946-1947 he spent 1 year in Canada as Research Associate at the University of Montreal, where he collaborated with D. A. Prins from the Research Division, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, in the preparation of... 

Aldosterone] (mineralocorticoid, steroid) isolated by Tadeusz Reichstein (Nobel Prize, Physiology/Medicine, 1950)... 

Hydroxycorticosterone)] (glucocorticoid, steroid) Tadeusz Reichstein (Poland/Switzerland) Edward Kendall Philip Hench (USA) Nobel Prize, Physiology/Medicine, 1950, glucocorticoids) [Cortisone (= 17-Hydroxy-11 -dehydrocorticosterone)] (glucocorticoid, steroid)... 

In 1950, along with Tadeusz Reichstein and Philip Showalter Hench, Edward Calvin Kendall (1886-1972) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex. 

Tadeusz Reichstein (1897-1996) eventually succeeded in developing an industrial synthesis starting from (D)-glucose. Merck in Darmstadt and Hoffinann-La Roche in Basel have produced ascorbic acid by this method since the 1930s. 

In 1928, the Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi isolated vitamin C, which was first designated as hexuronic acid, from the adrenal glands of animals and later from Hungarian paprika peppers. Between 1933 and 1934, the British chemists Sir Walter Norman Haworth and Sir Edmund Hirst and the Polish-Swiss chemist Tadeusz Reichstein succeeded in synthesizing vitamin C. The Reichstein process was adopted by F. Hoffmann-La Roche to produce vitamin C from 1934. The process includes one microbial oxidation step, from o-sorbitol to L-sorbose, and has been used commercially for about 80 years with many chemical and technical modifications to improve the efficiency of each step (Fig. 15.1). Currently more than 100,000 tons per year of pure vitamin C are produced worldwide. 

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