Tadeus Reichstein died on August 1, 1996, shortly after his 99th birthday. From 1938 to 1950 he was Head of the Pharmaceutical Institute and from 1946 to 1960 Head of the Institute of Organic Chemistry, both at the University of Basel. During his scientific career he received various honours and awards. For the isolation, structure elucidation and synthesis of important hormones of the adrenal cortex he shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in Medicine with the American scientists Eward C. Kendall and Philip S. Hench. According to an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of July 23, 1997, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, Reichstein told in an interview that his most important appreciation in Switzerland was the Marcel Benoist Prize in 1948 and the creation of the Tadeus Reichstein medal of the SGPhW for excellence in pharmaceutical sciences.