Our company was formed in 1997 from the businesses of Amersham International (UK), Pharmacia Biotech (Sweden) and Nycomed (Norway). The mergers created an innovative, research-driven and successful global company with two world-leading businesses in life sciences and diagnostic imaging/radiotherapy agents, currently employing almost 9000 people.

In 2001 our company changed its name to Amersham plc and the businesses became Amersham Biosciences and Amersham Health. We launched a new, common identity that links all parts of the company and will carry us into the future, as we work together to bring vision to medical discovery.

As we adopt our new identity, we must also pay tribute to our past - to the people, events and achievements that have formed our company. In this booklet we trace some of these highlights - focusing in particular on those activities which have influenced our current business. This is by no means a complete history of Amersham, Nycomed, Pharmacia Biotech and its partners, but we hope it will give you an insight into the proud heritage that we share.

Sir William Castell
Chief Executive
Amersham plc

Editor's Note: We have taken the liberty of simplifying the names of the Norwegian, Swedish and British companies whose histories became intertwined after the 1997 mergers. The Norwegian company is consistently referred to as Nycomed. The Swedish company is called Pharmacia until 1967, and Pharmacia Biotech from 1967-1997. The British company, which for 25 years was a government laboratory known as The Radiochemical Centre, is called Amersham until its privatisation in 1982 as Amersham International.

ÄKTA, Amerlite, Amertec, Amipaque, Ceretec, DaTSCAN, DYEnamic, EchoSeed, Ettan, FPLC, Hoefer, IMANET, Isopaque, LEADseeker, MegaBACE, Metastron, Myoview, Omnipaque, Omniscan, OncoSeed, PhosphorImager, RapidStrand, Scintillation Proximity Assay, Sephadex, Sepharose, Spin Signal, SnuPe, TempliPhi, ThermoSequenase and Visipaque are trademarks of Amersham plc.

Nycomed is a trademark of Nycomed Pharma Holding AS
NeoSpect is a trademark of Schering AG
Optison is a trademark of Mallinckrodt/Tyco
Pharmacia is a trademark of Pharmacia Corporation
TheraSeed is a trademark of Theragenics Corp.
Scintillation Proximity Assay (SPA) technology is covered by US Patent No. 4,568,649, European Patent No. 0,154,734 and Japanese patent application number 84/52452.