Pharmaceutical researcher with a flair for business who brought a string of vital drugs to market
In 1960 the chemist Ronald Cresswell, who has died aged 86, had a lucky break. As a result of travelling from Glasgow to take up a post in New York he attended a conference of the American Chemical Society, met the biochemist George Hitchings, and they bonded over their mutual interest in folic acid.
Hitchings worked at the Burroughs Wellcome laboratory in Tuckahoe, north of New York city, where he and Gertrude Elion developed a wide range of medicines, eventually, in 1988, becoming Nobel laureates. When they offered Cresswell a job in 1962, it proved to be the opportunity of a lifetime for the young scientist.
