Mohamed Hilmy Elnagdi was born in Egypt in September 1941.He graduated from the faculty of Science at Cairo University in 1962; since that date, Prof Elnagdi has worked at Cairo University , Faculty of Science , in the Chemistry Department. Prof Elnagdi obtained his M.Sc in 1966, PhD in 1969 and D.Sc in 1982.He also has been awarded a diploma in Applied Chemistry from Tokyo Institute of technology in 1973. Prof Elnagdi has been professor of organic chemistry at Cairo University since 1980. He worked as a professor of Organic Chemistry at Kuwait University from 1993 to 1999, then as visiting professor at the same university in 2003, then since 2007 till September 2014.

Professor Elnagdi has received fellowships from several institutions, including Tokyo institution of technology (Japan) NTNF Norway taken at University of Oslo 1977; Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Utah (USA) in 1976 with Prof L.B. Townsend; Alexander von Humboldt fellowship at the University of Bonn with Profs H. Wamhoff and R.Regitz. The Alexander von Humboldt has continually supported his activities in Germany, enabling him to cooperate with many German colleagues including Profs. K. Hafner (Darmstadt), K. S. Hatrki (Marburg), M. Hoffmann (Hannover) and H. H. Otto (Freiburg). Prof. Elnagdi has specialized in the synthesis of polyfunctional heterocycles and has published around 426 papers in this area of which 317 from Cairo University, 146 from Kuwait University and 42 papers from (German, French, Norwegian, Saudi, Iraqi, British and American institutes) as well as 30 review articles. The work has now 7005 citation with 167citation per paper and 36 h index. In addition, he got several national and regional research awards including TWAS Chemistry, COMESTECH awards, Cairo University career award and Egypt award for excellence.

Through his long career, he could develop several novel routes to biologically relevant heterocycles (> 1000 citation by others).

Moreover, prof. Elnagdi has published several books with international publishers as well as Arabic languages books to spread modern chemical knowledge in our country.

In addition, through his effort, more than 300 scholars could be trained through their theses to move in several areas of modern synthetic chemistry. Those are now the core staff of chemistry teaching and research in Egyptian and Arab universities and research leaders in petrochemical as well as pharmaceutical industries in Egypt and Arab universities.

In the last five years he could, through research and teaching, establish the concept of green synthesis that would have a great impact on modern Egyptian research and development in chemical petrochemistry industries.

Prof. Elnagdi has provided consultancy and small biologically interesting molecules to several multinationals including Basf (Germany), Bayer (Germany) , Glaxo Smith Klein (UK) , Shell researcher (UK) , Dupont (USA) , Loreal (France) , Specs and Biospecs (Holland) , Novarts (Switzerland) and several others enabling these foundations to apply for more than fifty patented activities of his products.

Elnagdi , through cooperation with Dye research units in Egypt , could also report on several novel potential dyes.