Tributes to Albert Hofmann [January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008]!

Chemist Albert Hofmann has died at the age of 102 on April 30, 2008.He is credited inter ailia for the isolation of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD in 1938 while working in Sandoz chemical company. The new substance, however, aroused no special interest in our pharmacologists and physicians; testing it further was therefore discontinued.

Five years later however he found himself in a dreamlike state and he finally confirmed that the substance was related to the lysergic acid -diethylamide tartrate he had just started working with and his dream like state might have been due to accidental absorption through his fingernails, he recorded.

He narrated the story in following way,’There seemed to be only one way of getting to the bottom of this. I decided on a self-experiment.” He took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature.

Though mainly remembered for LSD he continued to work at Sandoz, retiring as Director of Research for the Department of Natural Products in 1971 .Hofmann was unhappy that research on the drug had been curtailed following its adoption into the counter-culture.

You could read more about him here.