LITTLE HELPER.

Where would we be without Valium? Certainly not in Nutley, New Jersey, savoring the soft Klonopin light of a warm spring day. Nutley, ten minutes west of the Lincoln Tunnel, is home to the corporate campus of the Roche pharmaceutical company, which a couple of weeks ago threw a birthday party for Valium and its inventor, Dr. Leo Sternbach. Valium was turning forty; Sternbach, ninety-five. Both are diminished but are still going strong.

It was a noonday affair--very relaxed--populated mainly by employees of Roche, who owe their livelihood, if not their sense of well-being, to the Doc, as he's sometimes called. They gathered in the lobby of building No. 76, beneath a mezzanine hung with banners advertising the young turks, such as Fuzeon, Pegasys, Xeloda--reminders of what the benzo billions have made possible. There were balloons, and a message board for employees to sign ("Leo, Thanks for the happiness and relaxation you have given us over the years"). The capper was the cake, a giant, three-tiered ziggurat topped off by a trio of oversized pills, each with the trademark "V" in its center. One was light blue, one yellow, one white (10 mg., 5 mg., 2 mg.). "Happy Birthday Valium and Dr. Sternbach" was etched in the cake, and you half-expected a deranged Patty Duke to spring out of it screeching, "Having fun, kiddies?" Sadly, neither the cake nor the pills were real, though genuine cake and ice cream were on offer a few paces away. Employees ambled around with little paper plates.

Before long, the Doc himself arrived, stooped but beaming. He was bald and big-eared, with boxy glasses. He carried a cane and wore brown walking shoes with Velcro straps. He was led into an auditorium for a little tribute: executive testimonials ("an innovator's innovator"), the unveiling of a framed print (Leo through the years), standing ovations (dust careening in the stage lights), and a video (family snapshots and lab stills, accompanied by Dylan doing "Forever Young").

The employees know the Leo legend. Born in what is now Croatia and educated in Krakow, Sternbach learned chemistry from his father, a Polish pharmacist. In 1937, he moved to Switzerland, and went to work as a chemist for Roche, but was transferred, in 1941, to New Jersey, to a new lab in Nutley. In 1957, searching for a tranquillizer that wasn't as debilitating as Miltown, the best available at the time, Sternbach dusted off an old chemical compound that he'd experimented with in Krakow--a seven-membered ring structure, if you must know--and came up with Librium, the first ...