The synthetic opioid methadone was first developed in the year 1937, in Germany. In the USA was first brought to market by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company. It was in the year 1937 that methadone/dolophine, first came to be synthesized by Max Bockmühl and Gustav Ehrhart, two German scientists at IG Farben (that is, Hoechst-Am-Main, which comes under Frankfurt, Germany). They synthesized this opioid in the course of their quest to discover an analgesic which would prove easier to use in surgeries (as well as less potentially addictive) than morphine.

Bockmühl and Ehrhart proceeded to file a patent application for a synthetic substance which they named Hoechst 10820 or polamidon on September 11, 1941. Subsequently in the year 1947 Eli Lilly and Company introduced methadone as an analgesic in the United States.