The Sir David Jack Memorial

Sir David Jack is to be remembered as the main driving force behind one of the UK’s – and the World’s – foremost pharmaceutical companies. He was responsible, as Research and Development Director at Glaxo in the late 1960s, for putting in train a series of events that would take the company, and their subsidiary Allen & Hanbury, from manufacturers of ‘formula’ baby milk and cough pastilles to the highest echelons of their industry. 

Asthma, a killer affliction in the late 1940s and 50s, became a mere inconvenience – relieved by a succession of increasingly effective treatments developed at Greenford in West London and Ware in Hertfordshire.

With outstanding foresight, many key pharmaceutical products were developed by Glaxo during Sir David Jack’s tenure of his post between 1961 and 1987. By creating their own pharmaceutical products, rather than relying on external research groups, the company could protect their own medications and benefit from the following years’ income by fielding their own  unique Intellectual Property.

By developing a methodology of research, the teams established an effective control of mucus-secreting cells – the main problem with asthma – without the debilitating side-effects. Thus this process was extended to other afflictions of the human body, ultimately providing GlaxoSmithKline with a platform on which to generate a portfolio of highly profitable, global products that exists and is still in development today.