Courtois was acknowledged by Humphry Davy and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac as the true discoverer of iodine. He went into manufacturing high-quality iodine and its salts in 1822. In 1831 he was awarded 6,000 francs as part of the Montyon Prize by LAcademie royale des sciences for the medicinal value of this element. He struggled financially for the rest of his life and died 27 September 1838. He was 61 years old and had no assets left for his widow or son. In the year of his death, the Journal de chimie médicale' drily noted his passing under the heading Obituary as: