Leo Sternbach, 97, who created Valium, the nation’s most-prescribed drug during the 1970s, until critics claimed it was overused and newer drugs replaced it, died Sept. 28 at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Mr. Sternbach became a celebrated figure in research science for his creation of a group of chemicals that soothed anxious, irritated and agitated executives and housewives. Valium topped the list of most-common pharmaceuticals from 1969 to 1982, with nearly 2.3 billion pills distributed during its peak sales year of 1978.
Nicknamed “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Executive Excedrin,” Valium was a true cultural phenomenon.
Celebrities acknowledge an addiction to it: Elizabeth Taylor confessed to a strict diet of Valium and Jack Daniel’s; comedian Rodney Dangerfield daily swallowed it along with 136 other pills; and Tammy Faye Bakker had a fondness for a Valium-and-nasal spray cocktail.
Horrified, a Senate health subcommittee held hearings on tranquilizer addiction in 1979.
Mr. Sternbach, who had tested the basic chemical compound on himself while developing it, said he didn’t use Valium because it made him depressed. But neither did he consider its creation a curse, saying that everything can be abused.
Its popularity presaged such tricyclic antidepressants as Elavil and Nardil in the 1980s, followed by the class of drugs that includes Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil.
With a doctoral degree in organic chemistry from the University of Krakow, he went to work for Hoffmann-LaRoche in Switzerland and came to the United States in 1941, when all the company’s Jewish scientists fled Europe at the beginning of World War II. At LaRoche’s research facility in Nutley, N.J., he spent two years in the mid-1950s trying, without success, to duplicate Wallace Laboratories’ new Miltown tranquilizer. His bosses urged him to forget tranquilizers and move on to antibiotics.
He continued his research and by the end of 1959 came up with diazepam, which LaRoche’s marketing department dubbed Valium, after the Latin word for healthy.
His other major breakthroughs include the sleeping pills Dalmane and Mogadon, Klonopin for epileptic seizures and Arfonad for limiting bleeding during brain surgery. He held more than 240 patents.
