Gordon Hobday

Sir Gordon Hobday (born February 1, 1916 in Sawley (Derbyshire) , † May 27, 2015 ) was a British chemist and pharmaceutical manager ( Boots ).

Hobday studied chemistry at Nottingham University and received his PhD from London University . From 1939 he was a research assistant at the pharmaceutical company Boots. During the Second World War, efforts were made there to produce penicillin (although Hobday also had contact with Alexander Fleming , who was not very helpful to him, as he later recalled) and after the war, under the direction of Jack Drummond, with the fight against tropical diseases overlooking the market in the former British Empire. After the spectacular murder of Drummond and his family in France (Domenici trial), Hobday followed him as research director and shifted research to heart disease and arthritis. Hobday was Boots' Research Director in Nottingham from 1952 to 1968. Ibuprofen was developed there with its promotion . The development group led by Stewart Adams was looking for an alternative to aspirin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and found the active ingredient at Christmas 1963 (then called Brufen ). After that, another six years of further research and development were necessary before approval and market launch. In 1968 he became Deputing Managing Director, 1970 Managing Director and 1973 Chairman of Boots, which he remained until 1981. Under his leadership, the competitor Timothy Whites was taken over, a takeover attempt by Glaxo failed in 1972 due to the objection of the Monopolies Commission. The takeover of the retailer House of Fraser (then with the Harrods department store ) failed due to the objection of the Monopoly Commission in 1973. He later expanded abroad and merged the agrochemicals division with Fisons .

In 1981 he retired from Boots and became director of Central Independent Television, which went on the air in Birmingham in 1982. He stayed that way until 1985.

He was also a director at Lloyds Bank and vice chairman of the Prices Commission.

In 1979 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . 1979 to 1992 he was Chancellor of the University of Nottingham and 1983 to 1991 Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire.

He was married twice and had a daughter from his first marriage. His hobby was repairing old clocks and barometers.

source

• Sir Gordon Hobday, research chemist-obituary. In: The Telegraph . June 16, 2015, accessed June 7, 2016 (obituary).