Chemist R.L. McNeil Jr., who introduced Tylenol, dies at 94

Robert Lincoln McNeil Jr., 94, the Philadelphia chemist who introduced the world to the best-selling painkiller Tylenol and later sold his family business to pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, died Thursday of heart illness at his Wyndmoor, Pa., home.

A grandson of Robert McNeil, who founded the company that became McNeil Laboratories in a Kensington, Pa., drugstore in 1879, McNeil also was a major patron of many cultural and educational institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Zoo, and the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2005, McNeil received the prestigious American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal.

McNeil was born in Bethel, Conn., in 1915; his family lived in Germantown, Pa. After graduating from Yale in 1936, he earned a bachelor of science degree from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, now the University of the Sciences.

By then, his family's drugstore had morphed into a modern pharmaceutical company. It developed and mixed drugs so successfully that the McNeil family abandoned the retail business in the 1920s and shifted to selling to doctors and hospitals. In 1933, the company was incorporated as McNeil Laboratories.

In the 1940s, McNeil Laboratories decided to come up with an alternative to aspirin that would be available by prescription only.

French chemist Charles Gerhardt first discovered the compound that became known as Tylenol in 1852. But the drug dwelled in obscurity until the late 1940s, when British researchers documented that acetaminophen, the generic name for Tylenol, safely and effectively relieved fevers and pain.

Around the same time, some research linked aspirin to gastric bleeding, making acetaminophen an appealing alternative.

McNeil, who also had contributed to the development of penicillin, drew on his business skills and scientific prowess to bring acetaminophen to market.

In 1959, he and his brother, Henry McNeil, sold the business to Johnson & Johnson for company stock then valued at $33 million. McNeil remained chairman of McNeil Laboratories until 1964.

Survivors include his wife, Nancy McNeil, and four children.