Yusuf Khwaja Hamied (born 25 July 1936) is an Indian scientist, billionaire businessman and the chairman of Cipla, a generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father Khwaja Abdul Hamied in 1935. He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. Early life Hamied was born in Vilnius, then Poland, now Lithuania, and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai). His Indian Muslim father and Russophone Lithuanian Jewish mother, Luba Derczanska met in pre-war Berlin, where they were university students. Hamied was educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. He went to England in 1954, and earned a BA in chemistry in 1957, followed by a PhD, from Christ's College, Cambridge. He uses his chemistry notebooks from Cambridge when he develops new syntheses of drugs. Career 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. 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. Hamied stated, "I don't want to make money off these diseases which cause the whole fabric of society to crumble". In September 2011, in a piece about how he was trying to radically lower costs of biotech drugs for cancer, diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases, The New York Times wrote of Hamied: Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of the Indian drug giant Cipla Ltd., electrified the global health community a decade ago when he said he could produce cocktails of AIDS medicines for $1 per day — a fraction of the price charged by branded pharmaceutical companies. That price has since fallen to 20 cents per day, and more than six million people in the developing world now receive treatment, up from little more than 2,000 in 2001. Hamied has also been influential in pioneering development of multi-drug combination pills (also known as fixed-dose combinations, or FDCs), notably for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), asthma and other ailments chiefly affecting developing countries, as well as development of pediatric formulations of drugs, especially those benefiting children in poor settings. These innovations have greatly expanded access to medicine and increased drug safety by ensuring proper dosages are taken. He is also highly regarded for his role