chemistry

Philip Needleman

Philip Needleman is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Philip Needleman rather than just read about it. In short: Philip Needleman (February 10, 1939 – March 25, 2024) was an American medical researcher, pharmaceutical industry executive and leader and philanthropist. Needleman was a professor in and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, as well as former chief scientist and head of R&D at Monsanto/Searle/Pharmacia.

Key takeaways

Philip Needleman belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Philip Needleman to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Philip Needleman from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Philip Needleman (February 10, 1939 – March 25, 2024) was an American medical researcher, pharmaceutical industry executive and leader and philanthropist. Needleman was a professor in and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, as well as former chief scientist and head of R&D at Monsanto/Searle/Pharmacia. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine and served as interim president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and interim CEO of the Saint Louis Science Center. He is credited with discovering the first angiotensin receptor antagonist (hypertension); discovering the first pass drug metabolism (nitroglycerin); discovering a new endocrine hormone system ANF (atriopeptin), a critical hormone that controls salt, water metabolism, blood pressure and cardiac performance (heart failure); and discovering the existence and critical role of COX-2 in inflammation and oncology. In the pharmaceutical industry, he discovered and developed widely used therapeutics in arthritis (COX-2 inhibitors: Celebrex®, Bextra®, Parecoxib), heart failure (Eplerenone), and oncology (Sutent®).

Early life and education Needleman was born in Brooklyn, the son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary, Louis Needleman and Lillian (née Seligman) Needleman, whose family came to the U.S. to escape pogroms in Belarus. He and his brothers attended kindergarten through eighth grade in a Yeshiva in Jersey City and moved to North Bergen in 1948. Needleman started his public education in Horace Mann Junior High and graduated from Weehawken High School. Needleman received his Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy in 1960 and his Master of Science in pharmacology in 1962 from the University of the Sciences. He completed his Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1964. Immediately thereafter, he joined Washington University School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology, working with Ed Hunter, Ph.D., and Oliver H. Lowry, M.D., Ph.D.

Career

Academic career Needleman has a long and distinguished scientific career that encompasses both academic research as well as pharmaceutical drug development. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Washington University School of Medicine in 1964 and later joined the faculty of the Department of Pharmacology as a full professor in 1967. He served as head of the pharmacology department from 1976-89. Widely recognized for his research on hypertension, he and his colleagues discovered the first angiotensin antagonist and atrial natriuretic factor, the hormone that allows the heart to communicate with the kidneys to modulate salt and water metabolism and blood pressure.

Industry career Needleman left academia for industry in 1989. Ready for a new challenge, he joined Monsanto as vice president and chief scientist. He was interested in taking problems all the way from discovery to clinical trials and then, hopefully useful therapeutics. Both the medical school and Monsanto agreed that he could keep his lab and continue his basic research, which enabled his family to stay in St. Louis and still be loosely attached to WashU. After joining Monsanto, Dr. Needleman was able to connect his earlier lab discovery of COX-2, a variation of the cyclooxygenase enzyme responsible for inflammation and pain in arthritis patients. In 1993 he became president of Searle. There, he oversaw research into COX-2 that led to the development of the anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib (Celebrex). Approved by the FDA in 1998, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug has been used by millions of Americans. He then served as senior executive vice president and chief scientist of Pharmacia from 2000 to 2003 after Monsanto merged with Pharmacia & Upjohn. He remained closely tied to the university during this time, serving on the Board of Trustees beginning in 2002 and the Barnes-Jewish Hospital board. Needleman briefly returned to the School of Medicine in 2004, when he was named associate dean and assisted with BioMed 21, the university’s innovative research initiative designed to speed scientific discovery and to rapidly apply breakthroughs to patient care. He later served as interim president of two institutions, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (2009) and the Saint Louis Science Center (2011). Dr. Needleman briefly served on the board of Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc, a privately held company which he left when it was merged with Discovery Partners in 2006. He also formerly served as a director of NIDUS Partners in St. Louis and as a scientific partner with Prospect Venture Partners in San Francisco.

Awards and honors Needleman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1987 in the physiology and pharmacology section and to the academy's Institute of Medicine in 1993. He received the NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science in 2005 for his work on "metabolism of arachidonic acid in physiology and pathophysiology, which generates prostacyclin and thromboxane." In 1994, Dr. Needleman was awarded an honorary doctorate in science from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. He is a five-time recipient of Washington University's Distinguished Faculty Award on Founders Day and has also received the Second Century Award (1994) and an honorary doctorate in science (1999). Philip and Sima Needleman received the Eliot Search Award in 2011 and the Robert S. Brookings Award in 2019. Needleman received numerous honors and awards including the John Jacob Abel Award of the American Pharmacology Society (1974), Research Achievement Award from the American Heart Association (1988), C. Chester Stock Award Lectureship at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (2001), and the Industrial Research Institute Medal (2001). In 2002, he was appointed special advisor to the president for Research and Development at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and had joined the university's advisory committee for the creation of a National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev. In 2004, he received the Pharmacia-ASPET Award in Experimental Therapeutics and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Distinguished Service Award in 2011. He was later named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Philip Needleman

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Philip Needleman claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Philip Needleman before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Philip Needleman ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Philip Needleman

In research: Philip Needleman appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Philip Needleman in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Philip Needleman is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1939 births, 2024 deaths, 20th-century American scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Philip Needleman outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Philip Needleman” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Philip Needleman in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Philip Needleman means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Philip Needleman out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Philip Needleman in simple terms?

Why does Philip Needleman matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Philip Needleman?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Philip Needleman.