A world-renowned chemist who helped develop the painkiller ibuprofen while working at Boots has died at the age of 95.
Dr Stewart Adams, born in Northamptonshire, left school aged 17 and started a pharmacist apprenticeship at a Boots branch in Cambridgeshire.
He went on to study pharmacy at the University of Nottingham and began work at Boots Pure Drug Company in 1952.
It was the following year his work began researching substances which could have a pain-killing effect on rheumatoid arthritis.
Dr Stewart Adams, born in Northamptonshire, left school aged 17 and started a pharmacist apprenticeship at a Boots branch in Cambridgeshire. He has died aged 95
Over the next 10 years, Dr Adams and his team tested various compounds - many of which failed.
They eventually discovered 2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid. This would later become known as ibuprofen.
Dr Adams told the BBC in 2015 that the drug was 'very effective' when he took it to combat a headache from a hangover before giving a speech.
Further trials of ibuprofen had to be made before it was then licensed in 1969 as a prescription drug in the UK.
He was awarded an OBE for his work in the 1980s. This year is the 50th anniversary of the drug becoming licensed.
Dr Adams, a father-of-two and grandfather-of-six who lived in Redhill, near Nottingham, died at the Queen's Medical Centre on Wednesday.
His son, Chris, a solicitor in Nottingham, said: 'He was very humble and very objective and measured.
'He was an incredibly modest person who was very much dedicated to his work and his family.'
On his father's work, Mr Adams added: 'Being involved in that kind of project and remaining completely grounded and being such a good role model for my brother and I and the grandchildren and others in the family, we are incredibly proud of him,.
'I think quietly he was very pleased that people recognised him later on.'
He went on to study pharmacy at the University of Nottingham and began work at Boots Pure Drug
