Edouard Constant Sandoz (1853–1928)

Basel in Switzerland is one of the world’s centres of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Edouard Sandoz created one of the leading companies in the sector in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It continues as a subsidiary of the Basel-based multinational Novartis AG.

Sandoz was born in Basel when the dye and bleach industries there were evolving rapidly alongside the Swiss textile industries. His father was a cloth merchant. At the age of 19 he took an apprenticeship with a seller of raw silk in Basel. After six years he went to Paris to work at an aniline dye factory, learning about the new chemical alternatives to natural pigments. Returning to Basel in 1880 he joined a paint-manufacturing company, Durand & Huguenin. This led him to meet the chemist Alfred Kern and in 1886 they formed the company Chemische Fabrik Kern & Sandoz. Sandoz was the commercial director while Kern was technical director. They produced synthetic dyes that sold internationally.

After Kern died suddenly in 1893, Sandoz converted the business to a joint-stock company with his own name. He kept a majority of the shares but withdrew from daily operations due to poor health. The main products were still dyes and paints but the company manufactured the pain-relief drug antipyrin from 1895 and the sugar substitute saccharine from 1899. During and after the First World War, it advanced its international business due to the isolation of German manufacturers who were its major competitors. Sandoz returned to the board and oversaw the opening of subsidiaries in Britain, the United States, Germany and other countries. He led three calls for additional capital and developed the pharmaceutical branch, led by the Swiss biochemist Professor Arthur Stoll (later president of the company). This produced Gynergen for the treatment of migraine in 1921. The branch was loss-making at first but Sandoz’s vision was proved right when it became highly successful after his death in 1928.

During the next decades, chemicals for agriculture and pharmaceuticals took over entirely from paint and dye manufacturing. Sandoz merged with Ciba-Geigy in 1996 to form Novartis but the Sandoz name remains for a subsidiary that makes generic drugs.