Carl Djerassi, the Jewish chemist who developed the birth control pill, has died at the age of 91.

A professor at Stanford University, he was famous for heading a research team which developed norethindrone, a synthetic molecule that became a key component of the first birth control pill.

The pill revolutionised sexual practices and women’s lives.

Mr Djerassi, who died at his San Francisco home on Friday, suffered from cancer. His death is thought to have been a result of complications deriving from the illness.

He was born in Vienna, Austria, and lived his early life in Bulgaria, his father’s home country.

But he and his mother, Alice, returned to Vienna so that he could attend the Viennese Realgymnasium, the same school attended by Sigmund Freud.

When the Nazis occupied the country following the Anschluss with Germany in 1938, he and mother fled, arriving in the US the following year.

His father Samuel Djerassi did not make the journey until 1949.

In later life he developed a career as a playwright, using London as his base for writing.

In a 2005 interview with the JC, the man who had been awarded 17 honorary doctorates and America’s National Medal of Science, claimed, modestly: “If I hadn’t invented the pill, then someone else would have.”