Obituaries

The Swiss chemist who was the father of LSD

Albert Hofmann

1906–2008

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On April 16, 1943, Albert Hofmann was studying an alkaloid he had derived from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye, at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland. At some point he got a trace of the chemical—lysergic acid diethylamide-25—on his fingertips. He soon found himself dizzyingly lightheaded. “In a dream-like state, with eyes closed,” he recalled, “I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.” Hofmann had become the first person to take LSD, which would unleash a psychedelic revolution.

Hofmann had originally synthesized LSD in the hope that “it would be a stimulant for the respiratory and circulatory systems,” said the Los Angeles Times. After discovering its hallucinogenic properties, he took it again. This time, paranoia took hold: “A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul. I jumped up and screamed,” he related. A neighbor was transmogrified into “a malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask.”

Nonetheless, Hofmann would soon be touting LSD’s “ability to advance the human spiritual condition,” said the London Guardian. He was an unlikely proselytizer; he had written his doctoral dissertation at the University of Zurich on the gastrointestinal juice of the vineyard snail. But as a child, Hofmann said, “I had this very deep connection with nature.” LSD, he felt, could lay bare the foundations of the human psyche. “We need a new concept of reality,” he said. “LSD could help to generate such a new concept.”

At first, LSD held great promise, said The Washington Post. “Sandoz manufactured LSD under the trade name Delysid by the late 1940s. During the next two decades it was intensely researched as a drug to treat all manner of emotional and addictive disorders.” But the drug was so potent and unpredictable that various governments began outlawing it; the U.S. ban came in 1966. Hofmann remained an LSD enthusiast, though, taking it hundreds of times and receiving supportive letters from fellow trippers. But he was dismayed when characters such as Timothy Leary helped turn it into a recreational drug. Hofmann titled his 1979 autobiography LSD: My Problem Child.

Hofmann did extensive research into other psychedelics and retired from Sandoz in 1971. When he turned 100 on Jan. 11, 2006, he was celebrated with an international symposium. “This is really a high point in my advanced age,” he said. “You could say it is a consciousness-raising experience without LSD.”