Mystic Chemist

Published on the 70th anniversary of LSD's discovery A history of science, consciousness research and psychedelic studies. LSD and the man who discovered it Albert Hofmann, voted one of the 20th century's "greatest living geniuses" by the Daily Telegraph in 2007, the century's best-known and most influential chemist, was the man who discovered LSD. Dieter Hagenbach and Lucius Werthmller, who knew Hofmann, show how Hofmann's childhood fascination with nature influenced his work as a scientist, which led to his discovery of LSD in 1943 and its effects which he experienced when experimenting on himself, most famously on his legendary bicycle ride home. The book brings us Hofmann, the complex humanist within the wider social, scientific and political impact of LSD. The drug became the object of numerous clinical studies, paving the way for innovative forms of therapy, at the same time fuelling the hippie movement in the 1960s. Society's relationship to drugs has never been more controversial and politically charged. Yet Albert Hofmann, believed, until he drew his last breath at the age of 102, that his discovery would one day benefit humanity.