George B. Rathmann

George Rathmann earned his PhD in physical chemistry from Princeton University and spent more than a decade at Abbott Laboratories, where he rose to become Vice President of Research and Development. Before founding Amgen, he had a brief tenure at Litton Bionetics and Abbott Diagnostics, giving him rare industry experience combining rigorous research management with commercial pharmaceutical operations. His intellectual range — spanning chemistry, biology, and business — was precisely what venture capitalist William Bowes needed in a founding CEO for a biotech company. Rathmann brought not just scientific credibility but extraordinary people management skills, recruiting dozens of top scientists away from established pharmaceutical companies and universities to join a startup in suburban Los Angeles.

George B. Rathmann is widely credited as the intellectual architect of Amgen's founding culture and strategic identity. Born in 1927, Rathmann demonstrated a rare combination of scientific discipline and entrepreneurial instinct that he deployed in building Amgen from a venture-funded startup into the first biotech company to achieve genuine commercial scale. After guiding Amgen through its most formative decade — including the development and launch of Epogen and Neupogen — Rathmann stepped down as CEO in 1988 and subsequently became a director on Amgen's board. He went on to found ICOS Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company that developed Cialis (tadalafil) in collaboration with Eli Lilly, demonstrating that his entrepreneurial capabilities extended beyond Amgen. Rathmann received numerous industry honors and is remembered by colleagues as the person most responsible for establishing the cultural norms — scientific rigor, commercial ambition, and ethical accountability — that defined Amgen for decades. He passed away in 2012 at the age of 84.