A chemist who helped invent the painkiller ibuprofen, after he took it to cure his own hangover, has died at the age of 95.

Dr Stewart Adams died at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, England on Wednesday.

The British man has been praised for his "amazing achievement with the invention of ibubrofen" and was also described as "a genuinely nice guy".

Ibuprofen is now one of the world's best-selling anti-inflammatory painkillers.

Dr Adams, a father-of-two and grandfather-of-six, said he used it ahead of an important speech in the early 1960s.

He told the BBC: "I was first up to speak and I had a bit of a headache after a night out with friends. So I took a 600mg dose, just to be sure, and I found it was very effective."

Dr Adams left school at 17 and then started a pharmacist apprenticeship with a chemist. 

He went on to study pharmacy at the University of Nottingham and started working at Boots Pure Drug Company in 1952.

A stock photo of Ibuprofen | Image: Lauren Hurley/PA Archive/PA Images

A year later he began researching substances which could have a pain-killing effect on rheumatoid arthritis.

He carried out much of his work in a house in Nottingham.

Over the next decade, he and his team tested various compounds - many of which failed - before they discovered 2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid.

This would later become known as ibuprofen.

A patent was filed in 1962 and further trials had to be made before it was licensed in 1969 as a prescription drug.

Sophie Clapp, company archivist at Boots, described him as a "key hero of Boots", adding: "He was... a remarkable figure in the history of Boots.

"I was personally very sad to hear the news and felt very privileged to have known him. He was a really lovely man.

"He will never be forgotten, and I said that to his son. His discovery was a phenomenal achievement."