Stewart Adams (chemist)

Stewart Adams OBE (born 1923), is a British chemist, who was the main part of a team from Boots that developed ibuprofen in the early 1960s.

Adams was born in Byfield, Northamptonshire. His father was a railwayman, and grew up in a rural farming area in Northamptonshire. Adams had two older brothers, an older sister, and a younger brother.

Adams went to Byfield Council School, then his parents moved in 1933 to Doncaster, and he went to Doncaster Grammar School, then in 1937, to March Grammar School (now Neale-Wade Academy); he left school aged 15 in 1939. He became a pharmacist, on a three-year apprenticeship, at a Boots chemist in March, Cambridgeshire. From this he gained an interest in science, and Boots paid for him to do a B.Pharm degree at University College, Nottingham, which he was awarded in 1945.

He rejoined the Boots company in 1945 and worked on their project to produce penicillin. He was moved to the research department of Boots and he went on to research rheumatoid arthritis. This was followed by a PhD in pharmacology at Leeds University returning to Boots in 1952. It was funded by a £300 research scholarship from the Pharmaceutical Society that was matched by Boots and focussed on the heparin-histamine relationships. At the time, the main medicine for the condition were corticosteroids, which had side effects.

In 1953, Adams began work on other chemical substances that could have a pain-killing effect, and have less side effects, centred on rheumatoid arthritis. He worked in a house in the south of Nottingham for many years, as the main labs had been destroyed in the war, then moved to Boots Pharmaceuticals new building on Pennyfoot Street in 1960 where there was a radioactive lab. This is now BioCity Nottingham.

...
Wikipedia