Medicine: Research & Reward

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...