ALBERT HOFMANN, 1906-2008

At the age of 102 years, Albert Hofmann died peacefully last Tuesday
morning, 29th April, in his home near Basel, Switzerland. Still last
weekend we talked to him, and he expressed his great joy about the
blooming plants and the fresh green of the meadows and trees around
his house. His vitality and his open mind conducted him until his last breath.

He is reputed to be one of the most important chemists of our times.
He is the discoverer of LSD, which he considers, up to date, as both
a "wonder drug" and a "problem child". In addition he did pioneering
work as a researcher of other psychoactive substances as well as
active agents of important medicinal plants and mushrooms. Under the
spell of the consciousness-expanding potential of LSD the scientist
turned increasingly into a philosopher of nature and a visionary
critical of contemporary culture.

Until his death Albert Hofmann remained active. He communicated with
colleagues and experts from all over the world, gave interviews, and
showed great interest in the world's affairs, although he decided to
retire from public life already a few years ago. Nevertheless he
welcomed visitors at his home on the Rittimatte, and opened the door
for late in the evening.

He managed to keep his almost childlike curiosity for the wonders of
nature and creation. In his "paradise," as he would call his home,
he enjoyed being close to nature, especially to plants. During one of
our last visits he said to us with luminous eyes: "The Rittimatte is
my second most important discovery." It was always a unique
experience to stroll with him over his meadows and to share his
enjoying the living nature all around. Gratefully and lovingly we
grieve for an outstanding scientist, an important philosopher, a dear
and true friend, and our member of the board.

Albert Hofmann was born on January 1906 in the quiet small town of
Baden, Switzerland, as the eldest one of four children. His father is
a toolmaker in a factory where he meets Albert's mother-to-be; when
he falls seriously ill, Albert has to support the family. That's why
he decides for a commercial apprenticeship. At the same time he
starts studying Latin and other languages, since he wants to take his
A-levels, which he succeeds in at a private school, paid for by a godfather.

In 1926, at the age of twenty, Albert Hofmann begins to study
chemistry at the University of Zurich. Four years later he does his
doctorate with distinction. Subsequently he works at the Sandoz
pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, a company to
which he proves his loyalty for more than four uninterrupted
decades. (In 1996 Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy merged to become Novartis.)
That's where he mainly works with medicinal plants and mushrooms.
He's specifically interested in alkaloids (nitrogen compounds) of
ergot, a cereal fungus. In 1938 he isolates the basic component of
all therapeutically essential ergot alkaloids, lysergic acid; he
mixes it with a series of chemicals. He then tests the effects of the
thus derived lysergic acid derivatives as circulatory and respiratory
stimulant among others LSD-25 (Lysergic acid diethylamide). Because
the effects observed fell short of expectations, however, the
pharmacologists at Sandoz quickly lose interest in it.

Five years later, following a "peculiar presentiment," Albert Hofmann
devotes himself again to LSD-25. On 16 April 1943, while
synthesizing, he is overcome by unusual sensations "a remarkable
restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness," which prompt him to
interrupt his laboratory work. "At home I lay down and sank into a
not unpleasant intoxication like condition, characterized by an
extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes
closed (I found the daylight too unpleasantly glaring), I perceived
an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes
with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours
this condition faded away."

Three days later, on 19 April 1943, Hofmann sets out for the first
voluntary LSD trip in the history of man. Because he cannot yet judge
the enormous efficacy of the drug, he takes, at 4:20 pm, with 250
microgram a relatively high dose - and gets to know the
hallucinogenic power of the substance with all its intensity. With
his discovery of LSD Albert Hofmann has caused a snowball effect,
which turns into an avalanche in no time. It influences the late
second millennium at least in the Western world - to an extent,
comparable only to the "pill". Consciousness researchers respectfully
spoke of an "atom bomb of the mind."

To worldwide setting-in research Albert Hofmann makes essential
contributions. So he is, in 1958, the first one to succeed in
isolating the psychoactive substances psilocybin and psilocin from
Mexican magic mushrooms (Psilocybe mexicana); in Ololiuqui, the seeds
of a climbing plant, he finds substances related to LSD. He isolates
and synthesizes substances of important medicinal plants in order to
study their effects. His basic research blesses Sandoz with several
successful remedies: Hydergine, an effective one in geriatrics,
Dihydergot, a circulation- and blood-pressure stabilizing medicament,
and Methergine, an active agent applied in gynecology. Hofmann stays
with Sandoz until his retirement in 1971, last as head of the
research department for natural medicines. From then on he devotes
more and more of his time to writing and lecturing. He increasingly
wins recognition for his scientific pioneering ventures: he is given
honorary doctorates by the ETH Zurich, the Stockholm university, and
the Berlin Free University; and he is called into the Nobel Prize Committee.

Here, outstanding contributions to research were honored - but Albert
Hofmann's life's work comprises much more. From the start he took a
favorable view of efforts by physicians and psychotherapists to
include LSD into new approaches for the treatment of manifold chronic
diseases. But LSD isn't only useful with special diagnoses it's
Hofmann's firm belief that the "psychedelic" potential of this
"wonder drug" could be beneficial to all of us. In LSD-induced
altered states of consciousness its discoverer doesn't only see
psychotic delusions of a chemically manipulated mind, but windows to
a higher reality true spiritual experiences during which a normally
deeply buried potential of our mind, the heavenly element of
creation, our unity with it reveals itself. "The one-sided belief in
the scientific view of life is based on a far-reaching
misunderstanding," Hofmann says in his book Insight Outlook.
"Certainly, everything it contains is real but this represents just
one half of reality; only its material, quantifiable part. It lacks
all those spiritual dimensions which cannot be described in physical
or chemical terms; and it's exactly these which include the most
important characteristics of all life."

It's not the single consumer alone who profits from chemicals which
help to understand these aspects of the world; for Hofmann it could
help to heal deficits the Western world chronically suffers from:
"Materialism, estrangement from nature (...), lack of professional
fulfillment in a mechanized, lifeless world of employment, boredom
and aimlessness in a rich, saturated society, the missing of a
sense-making philosophical fundamentalness of life." Starting from
experiences as LSD conveys them, we could "develop a new awareness of
reality" which "could become the basis of a spirituality that's not
founded on the dogmas of existing religions, but on insights into a
higher and profounder sense" on that we recognize, read, and
understand "the revelations of the book which God's finger wrote."
When such insights "become established in our collective
consciousness, it could arise from that, that scientific research and
the previous destroyers of nature - technology and industry - will
serve the purpose of changing back our world into what it formerly
was: into an earthly Garden of Eden."

With this message the genius chemist turns into a profound
philosopher of nature and visionary critical of contemporary
culture. The critical distance from the LSD euphoria of the hippie-
and flower power-driven ones Albert Hofmann has never given up,
however; that he has fathered a "problem child" he already emphasizes
with the title of one of his most known works. He always underlines
the risks of an uncontrolled intake. On the other hand he never tires
of emphasizing what's the basic difference between LSD and most of
the other drugs: even if used repeatedly, it doesn't make addictive;
it doesn't reduce one's awareness; taken in a normal dose it's
absolutely non-toxic. The total demonizing of psychedelics, as
pursued by the mass media, conservative politicians, and governments
from the sixties onward, he never could understand; for him, there is
no reason why mentally stable persons in the right set and setting
shouldn't enjoy LSD. All the more disappointed Albert Hofmann was
when, in the late sixties, he had to see it happen that the use of
LSD was worldwide criminalized and prohibited - even for therapeutic
and research purposes

The impetus for a change emanating from the impact of the
international Symposium "LSD - Problem Child and Wonder Drug" in 2006
in Basel, at the occasion of his 100th birthday, quickened him to say
that "after this conference my problem child has definitely turned
into a wonder child," and he regarded this development as his most
beautiful birthday present.

And after just shortly before his 102nd birthday, he enjoyed taking
notice that the first LSD study with humans has received the
permission from the Federal Office of Public Health in Bern, which he
called the "fulfillment of my heart's desire."

His life has become an ideal for many for how we can reach a great
age in mental and physical vigor by retaining a childlike curiosity.

Albert Hofmann repeatedly expressed his conviction, that his mystical
experiences and his trips into other worlds of consciousness, which
he experienced first spontaneously as a child and later during his
experiments with psychedelic substances would be the best
preparations for the last journey which everybody has to go on at the
end of her or his life. He has retained his curiosity for himself for
his last journey.