1. Yusuf Khwaja Hamied was born on 25 July 1936 and is an Indian scientist, billionaire businessman and the chairman of Cipla, a generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father Khwaja Abdul Hamied in 1935.
16 Facts About Yusuf Hamied
1. 2.
Yusuf Hamied is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.
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Yusuf Hamied was educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School and St Xavier's College, Mumbai.
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Yusuf Hamied went to England in 1954, and earned a BA in chemistry in 1957, followed by a PhD, all from Christ's College, Cambridge.
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Yusuf Hamied uses his chemistry notebooks from Cambridge when he develops new syntheses of drugs.
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Yusuf 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.
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Yusuf 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.
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Yusuf Hamied stated, "I don't want to make money off these diseases which cause the whole fabric of society to crumble".
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Dr Yusuf K Hamied, chairman of the Indian drug giant Cipla Ltd.
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Yusuf Hamied is highly regarded for his role in expanding the production of bulk drugs and "active pharmaceutical ingredients" in India.
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In 2009 the Yusuf Hamied Centre was opened at Christ's College.
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In 2020 it was announced that Yusuf Hamied had made a substantial donation to Cambridge University's chemistry department.
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Yusuf 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, Corriere della Sera, Der Spiegel, Wired and numerous other leading publications, as well as on television outlets such as ABC News, the BBC, CNN and CBS' 60 Minutes.
14.
In February 2013, Yusuf Hamied announced his retirement plans from Cipla after remaining managing director of the company for 52 years.
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Yusuf Hamied was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour by Government of India in 2005.
16.
Yusuf Hamied was recently interviewed for the Creating Emerging Markets project at the Harvard Business School, discussing at length his strategies to provide AIDS treatments and other drugs to help treat poor people in the developing world.