Yusuf Hamied

Yusuf Khwaja Hamied (born 25 July 1936) is an Indian scientist, billionaire businessman and the chairman of Cipla, a generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father Khwaja Abdul Hamied in 1935. He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.

Early life

Hamied was born in Vilnius, then Poland, now Lithuania, and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai). His Indian Muslim father and Russophone Lithuanian Jewish mother, Luba Derczanska met in pre-war Berlin, where they were university students. Hamied was educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School. He went to England in 1954, and earned a BA in chemistry in 1957, followed by a PhD, from Christ's College, Cambridge. He uses his chemistry notebooks from Cambridge when he develops new syntheses of drugs.

Career

Hamied is best known outside India for defying large Western pharmaceutical companies in order to provide generic AIDS drugs and treatments for other ailments primarily affecting people in poor countries. Hamied has led efforts to eradicate AIDS in the developing world and to give patients life-saving medicines regardless of their ability to pay, and has been characterized as a modern-day Robin Hood figure as a result.

Hamied stated, "I don't want to make money off these diseases which cause the whole fabric of society to crumble".

In September 2011, in a piece about how he was trying to radically lower costs of biotech drugs for cancer, diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases, ''The New York Times'' wrote of Hamied:

Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of the Indian drug giant Cipla Ltd., electrified the global health community a decade ago when he said he could produce cocktails of AIDS medicines for $1 per day — a fraction of the price charged by branded pharmaceutical companies. That price has since fallen to 20 cents per day, and more than six million people in the developing world now receive treatment, up from little more than 2,000 in 2001.

Hamied has also been influential in pioneering development of multi-drug combination pills (also known as fixed-dose combinations, or FDCs), notably for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), asthma and other ailments chiefly affecting developing countries, as well as development of pediatric formulations of drugs, especially those benefiting children in poor settings. These innovations have greatly expanded access to medicine and increased drug safety by ensuring proper dosages are taken. He is also highly regarded for his role in expanding the production of bulk drugs and "active pharmaceutical ingredients" (APIs, the active chemical components in medicines) in India.

Hamied has been a major benefactor to Cambridge. In 2009 the Yusuf Hamied Centre was opened at Christ's College. The centre features a bronze portrait bust of Hamied by fellow Christ's College alumnus, Anthony Smith. The college also has a Todd-Hamied Fellow in chemistry, a post held by Professor Chris Abell, FRS, from 1986 until his death in October 2020.

In 2018 he made a donation to the chemistry department at Cambridge to support the 1702 Chair of Chemistry, the oldest professorship in the subject there, which has been renamed after him as the Yusuf Hamied 1702 Chair. There is also a Hamied Laboratory for Chemical Synthesis & Catalysis in the department, as well as a Todd-Hamied Seminar Room and Todd-Hamied Laboratory, the last two (and the Christ's fellowship) being a tribute also to Alexander, Lord Todd, Nobel laureate in chemistry, whom Hamied described as 'my mentor and guide over the years' since he completed his Ph.D. at Christ's College with Todd. Todd himself was 1702 Professor from 1944 to 1971, as well as Master of Christ's. In 2020 it was announced that Hamied had made a substantial donation to Cambridge University's chemistry department. This donation led to the foundation of the Hamied Scholars Programme, and the department has subsequently been renamed the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry until 2050. Yusuf Hamied and the Cipla Foundation made a Rs 20 crore donation to IISER Pune for a state of the art chemistry facility that would be used in outreach programmes.

Hamied has been the subject of in-depth profiles in ''The New York Times'', ''Time'' magazine, ''The Guardian'', ''Le Monde'', ''The Economist'', the ''Financial Times'', ''The Times (London)'', '' Corriere della Sera'', '' Der Spiegel'', ''Wired'' and numerous other leading publications, as well as on television outlets such as ''ABC News'', the BBC
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