Introduction

This book is dedicated to all whose lives were changed by Albert Hofmann’s discoveries.

“Not I, LSD was chosen” succinctly said ditions and journeys and the many years Albert Hofmann in 2007 when, at the age of retirement devoted to natural philosophy of 101, he was selected as the most impor- and an extremely rich social life. tant living genius by a jury from the His research into ergot alkaloids led renowned British newspaper the Daily to several drugs that he developed virtually Telegraph. Hardly any other discovery by himself and these earned and continue in the twentieth century has exercised to earn his former employer billions in greater influence on science, society, and sales. Even though Albert Hofmann never culture than the mysterious, incomparably earned the Nobel Prize due to the con- potent substance that in doses of a mere troversy surrounding LSD, he is the best millionth of a gram profoundly alters con- known twentieth-century chemist and the sciousness. The chemist discovered its only one with pop star status—as the psychedelic effect on April 19, 1943, storm of flashbulbs at his frenetically cel- during a self-experiment on his legendary ebrated appearances on his 100th birthday bicycle ride. This first LSD trip fundamen- at the LSD Symposium in Basel clearly tally changed his life as it later would demonstrated. lead millions of people throughout the After its fateful discovery, LSD became world into new directions. the subject of thousands of clinical studies Albert Hofmann’s biography takes us for decades as well as obscure experiments on a journey through the twentieth century: by Secret Services and the Military. In From his mystical experiences of nature the 1960s it left the laboratory and fueled as a child in Baden, to his study of chemistry the emerging youth and Hippie movements with Nobel Prize winner Paul Karrer in in the USA that ultimately changed the Zurich, his discovery of LSD and of psilocybin world—a mass phenomenon that unleashed at Sandoz in Basel, his adventurous expe- downright hysteria about LSD, which was

x REVIEW COPY - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION SYNERGETIC PRESS INTRODUCTION described as the devil’s work. The cre- when he had the experience in his later ativity-enhancing effect of this psychedelic years of LSD once more gaining acceptance. substance influenced the development The Swiss Federal president of the time, of computer technology just as significantly Moritz Leuenberger wrote, “Through your as it led to pioneering scientific discoveries research and writings, Dr. Hofmann, you and a holistic relationship of humans to have helped keep artistic, philosophical their environment. and religious questions alive in scientific Albert Hofmann remained linked to discussions,” as he congratulated him on this molecule for the rest of his life, which his 100th birthday. prepared the ground for innovative therapy Albert Hofmann—an extraordinary per- approaches and a new estimation of mystic son, researcher and mystic, maintained states, and brought him into contact with his openness, curiosity and love of the such thinkers as Aldous Huxley, Ernst living creation up to his last breath at the Jünger and Karl Kerényi, as well as countless age of 102. scientists, artists and counter-culture pro- ponents. He never lost faith in his “problem child” to which he attested the potential Dieter Hagenbach and of a wonder drug, and he was pleased Lucius Werthmüller

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