Background
Adams was born in Byfield, Northamptonshire. His father was a railwayman, and grew up in a rural farming area in Northamptonshire.
Adams was born in Byfield, Northamptonshire. His father was a railwayman, and grew up in a rural farming area in Northamptonshire.
University of Nottingham.
Adams had two older brothers, an older sister, and a younger brother. He became an pharmacist, on a three-year apprenticeship, at a Boots United Kingdom 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 Doctor of Philosophy in pharmacology at Leeds University returning to Boots in 1952.
lieutenant 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.
Ibuprofen
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 laboratory This is now BioCity Nottingham. Four substances that went to clinical trial failed, and the last - ibuprofen - worked.
He took the first dose himself and used the drug to treat his own headaches before it was on the market.
In 1969 ibuprofen was licensed as a prescription drug in the United Kingdom, and in 1974 in the United States of America. Ibuprofen became on sale for general pharmacy (over-the-counter) in 1983, as Nurofen. Foreign me, that was the most exciting time of all."
He retired as Head of Pharmacological Sciences at Boots in 1983.