Medicine: Research & Reward

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Research knows no frontiers, but researchers in different parts of the world often work, unknown to each other, on the same problem. Thus, in 1936, two biochemists, Edward Kendall of Rochester, Minn, and Polish-born Tadeus Reichstein of Basel, Switzerland, independently reported that among the secretions of the adrenal glands they had found a complex hormone. Kendall called it compound E.

Years passed, during which this hormone had little practical value. Meanwhile, Reichstein ran the number of hormones and similar substances found in the adrenal glands to 28, and Kendall kept trying to synthesize compound E, or something like it. At last Kendall and others succeeded, and late in 1948, a colleague at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Philip Hench, directed the first injections of cortisone to human victims of rheumatoid arthritis. The results were dramatic. Suddenly, a vast new field of medical research was opened.

Last week, for their work with cortisone and other adrenal hormones, Drs. Edward Calvin Kendall, Philip Showalter Hench and Tadeus Reichstein were awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for medicine. In the three-way split, each will get $10,571.