Robert L. McNeil, Jr.

Who was Robert L. McNeil, Jr.?

Robert Lincoln McNeil, Jr. was an American chemist and pharmaceutical industry executive. He was responsible for, among other things, the commercial development, naming, and introduction of the pain reliever Tylenol.

McNeil was born in Bethel, Connecticut, on July 13, 1915, and was raised in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. He earned two undergraduate degrees, the first in 1936 from Yale University, where he majored in physiological chemistry and bacteriology, after which he started working part-time at the family's pharmaceutical business. He earned a second bachelor's degree in 1938, this from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science.

After completing college in 1938, he joined McNeil Laboratories full-time, coming on board to what had been the family business for three generations having been founded in 1879. The company had been founded as a corner drug store and had grown into selling medicines on a commercial basis. He began the process of transforming the company, adding a research and development group to develop new prescription medications and restructuring the array of products being offered for sale.