In high school, Reichstein participated in the national mathematics olympiad in Russia and was the third highest scorer in 1977 and second highest scorer in 1978. Because of the
Antisemitism in the Soviet Union at the time, Reichstein was not accepted to Moscow University, even though he had passed the special math entrance exams. He attended a semester of college at
Russian University of Transport instead. His family then decided to emigrate, arriving in Vienna, Austria, in August 1979 and New York, United States in the fall of 1980. Reichstein worked as a delivery boy for a short period of time in New York. He was then accepted to and attended
California Institute of Technology for his undergraduate studies. Reichstein received his
PhD degree in 1988 from
Harvard University under the supervision of
Michael Artin. Parts of his thesis entitled "The Behavior of Stability under Equivariant Maps" were published in the journal
Inventiones Mathematicae. ==Career==