Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann was a Swiss chemist who in 1938 first synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD-25, and on April 19, 1943, became the first person to discover its psychoactive properties. He spent more than four decades at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel and lived to age 102.

He was born on January 11, 1906, in Baden, Aargau, the eldest of four children of a toolmaker. He earned his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Zürich in 1929 and joined the pharmaceutical-chemical research department of Sandoz the same year, working under Arthur Stoll on alkaloids of the ergot fungus.

His first synthesis of LSD-25 in 1938 was set aside as uninteresting; only in 1943, on resynthesizing the compound, did he absorb a trace through his fingertips and experience its effects. Three days later, on April 19, 1943, he ingested 250 micrograms in a deliberate self-experiment and made the bicycle ride home that became known as Bicycle Day in psychedelic folklore.

He went on to isolate and synthesize psilocybin and psilocin from Mexican Psilocybe mushrooms in 1958 and to identify lysergic acid amide in the seeds of Turbina corymbosa. His memoir LSD: My Problem Child (1979) reflected on the medical promise and recreational misuse of his discovery. He retired from Sandoz in 1971 and died at his home in Burg im Leimental on April 29, 2008, at age 102.

The given name Albert is of Germanic origin, from adal ("noble") and beraht ("bright"), meaning "noble and bright." It is a masculine name, and he bore it.