My father, John Lewis, who has died aged 92, played a leading role in the development of buprenorphine, used successfully to treat millions of people worldwide as an alternative to morphine as a painkiller after operations, and later as an alternative to methadone, to treat opioid drug addicts.
He did this primarily in his role as research and development director at Reckitt & Colman pharmaceuticals (1965-89), and later at Bristol University, where he set up the Reckitt & Colman psychopharmacology unit led by David Nutt. In the 1990s his research became independently funded, moving to Bath University in 2000, where it was led by Steve Husbands.
