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Albert Hofmann, 11 January 1006 – 29 April 2008
An Obituary by Dieter A. Hagenbach and Lucius Werthmüller
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."
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