Shamil Ahmadov was born on 25 August 1924. In 1941, he completed his secondary education with honors. After working as a teacher for a while, he studied at Baku State University, Faculty of Chemistry, from 1946 to 1951.

In 1951, he embarked on postgraduate studies at the Department of Petrochemistry, BSU, where he then was promoted to a teaching assistant, senior teacher and associate professor. He chaired the department from 1959 to 1965. In 1954, Shamil Ahmadov defended his PhD thesis, and achieved a ScD degree in 1963. In 1964, he was made a professor of petrochemistry.

He chaired BSU Department of Organic Chemistry from 1965 to 1992. In 1992, Shamil Ahmadov was made a professor at this department.

He researched into alkylation of automatic hydrocarbons, multinucleate and condensed aromatic hydrocarbons to study some regularities of changes in some nuclei. He summarized the results of his research and teaching activity in 320 papers, seven textbooks, an education handbook and a brochure.

He supervised eight ScD and 30 PhD students to completion. Shamil Ahmadov translated several higher and secondary school textbooks from Russian into Azerbaijani.

He gave a paper at the 6th international conference of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in Moscow in 1986.