Albert Hofmann
A chemist at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, working on ergot alkaloids, who first synthesised LSD-25 in 1938 and identified its psychoactivity in 1943. He later worked on the isolation and characterisation of psilocybin and psilocin from Psilocybe mushrooms.
He appears in this corpus as a source rather than a figure: the earliest description of a lysergamide's effects, the naming and dating of a synthesis, and the Sandoz-era characterisation work that later literature builds on. Where a substance page dates a discovery to the 1930s-60s Basel programme, this is the provenance.
What it claims
First synthesis and first description of effect for specific lysergamides, with dates and laboratory context; the structural and analytical characterisation of several ergot and mushroom alkaloids.
How well attested
The chemistry is strong and independently reproduced — structures, syntheses and dates are corroborated by the patent record, by Sandoz documentation, and by later analytical work. The effect descriptions are self-experiments: single-subject, unblinded, and written up after the fact. They are historically primary and pharmacologically weak, and this corpus uses them for what happened and when, not for what a dose does.
Cited by
24 substance records cite this source