Roger Altounyan, creator of an asthma medicine

Roger Edward Collingwood Altounyan, creator of an inhaler and an asthma medicine, was born in 1922. His family had moved to Great Britain from Aleppo (Syria); his father and grandfather were doctors. During the Second World War he trained as a fighter pilot in Rhodesia, from 1941 served as a flying instructor and was awarded the Air Force Cross for new methods of night flying. After the war he studied at the medical faculty in Cambridge.

He developed asthma as a student. From 1956 he searched for asthma medicines at a pharmaceutical company, testing them on himself; he provoked asthma attacks in himself more than 1,000 times. The medicine he completed in February 1965 was named disodium cromoglycate in Britain and cromolyn in America, and it soon became the main asthma treatment worldwide. In the late 1970s he moved to Australia.

The photograph shows an elderly man in a dark jacket, white shirt and tie.