Nonagenarians Stay Active

But this is a false assumption in the case of Reichstein, who at age 95 is still publishing. Reichstein, who shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, is still hard at work at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Basel, Switzerland, actively participating in international collaborations. His 1992 paper "The phloroglucinols of Dryopteris s

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But this is a false assumption in the case of Reichstein, who at age 95 is still publishing. Reichstein, who shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, is still hard at work at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Basel, Switzerland, actively participating in international collaborations.

His 1992 paper "The phloroglucinols of Dryopteris stenolepis" (C.J. Widen, P. Ayras, T. Reichstein, Annales Botancici Fennici, 29[1]:41-54), for example, was coauthored with Finnish researchers from the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku. In the United States, a change in a federal law may make nonagenerian researchers like Reichstein more common on university campuses. January 1 of this year marked the end of the exemption for university faculty to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which in essence will prohibit mandatory retirement for professors (see story on ...

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