The Father of Psychedelica Turns 100

If you came of age in the late 1960s, as I did, and you lived on or near a college campus, as I also did, it was difficult to miss the onset of a psychedelic revolution in literature, art, music and, yes, drug use.

It was not Aldous Huxley or Timothy Leary, Peter Max or the Jefferson Airplane who were the progenitors of this revolution, but rather a diminutive Swiss pharmacologist by the name of Albert Hoffman, who synthesized LSD-25 while studying the active compounds of medicinally important plants for Sandoz Laboratories. In 1943, Hoffman became the first person to take LSD, although his discovery and the extraordinary effects it had would not becoming widely known until a generation later.

The Father of Psychedelica (who is flanked by two disciples in the photo above) turns 100 next week. He reflects on his discovery and legacy in a New York Times interview.