George Rathmann, Amgen's founding chief executive, has died, reports The New York Times. He was 84. Rathmann led Amgen in the 1980s while it developed what the Times calls "two of the most successful drugs in history" — Epogen and Neupogen. "He was the one who created the company, without any doubt," says Lowell Sears, a former chief financial officer at Amgen.
"Rathmann is widely considered one of the fathers of the biotechnology industry," the Times adds.