How to Become a Millionaire without Losing your Soul

04 June 2009

Professor W. Graham Richards

One of the few attractive ways of escaping the current economic depression is to create new companies and new industries. Scientific research provides perhaps the best starting point. Just how this can be achieved is illustrated by successful examples from Oxford University. From the Chemistry Department alone six members of staff have become millionaires without giving up their university posts or being given dispensation from duties.

Professor W. Graham Richards graduated in Chemistry from Brasenose College, Oxford in 1962, and was a Fellow of Brasenose and lecturer, reader and professor at Oxford for over 40 years. For the last 10 years until his retirement in 2007 he was Head of Chemistry, the largest chemistry department in the Western World.

This lecture was presented by The John Curtin School of Medical Research.

Broad Topics: Medicine and Life Science

Sub-topics: Medical & Health Science

Areas: ANU College of Medicine and Health Sciences

Richards has played a leading role in the development of the field of computer-aided drug design and is the author of over 300 scientific articles and 15 books. He invented the term Quantum Pharmacology and published a book under this title in 1977. He was awarded the Royal Society Mullard Award for his work on the development of methods of computer-aided molecular design, their application and exploitation, and was the recipient of the American Chemical Society's award for computers in chemical and pharmaceutical research.  He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University and at the University of California, Berkeley.  Richards was involved in founding the University of Oxford's technology transfer company, Isis Innovation Ltd, in 1988 and was subsequently its director for 20 years. He founded his own first spin-out company, Oxford Molecular Ltd, in 1989, and has since worked with a number of spinouts, including as director of Catalyst Biomedica Ltd and as chairman of IP2IPO Group Plc, which later became the publicly quoted IP Group Plc. He has recently published a book on his commercialization experience, Spin-outs: Creating Businesses from University IP.