On April 29th 2008 the global psychedelic community lost one of its most popular members. Dr. Albert Hofmann died from a heart attack in his home in Burg, Switzerland at 9 am. He reached the age of 102 years and was a very active intellectual till his last day.

It was quite exactly 65 years back when Hofmann discovered a substance that had major influence on history´s development, a subsance that is that powerful that it was even claimed to be a psychic atomic bomb.

Working at Sandoz pharmacy company back then the decided to re-sythesize a substance that had already been synthesized in 1938 and was classified as medically uninteressting. After he had finished the synthesis process he experienced what he himself called a “psychedelic state of mind”. Its quite remarkable that he was not shocked by this experience- but became interested in the substance again! On 19th April 1943 he started his first self experiment with Lysergic acid diethylamide. The anecdote about him driving home on his bicycle while being still “under the spell” was an inspiration for blotter arts that got almost as popular as the OM within the Psytrance scene.

Being not only a natural scientist but also an intellectual and philosopher he got in contact with quite some historic personalities. Aldous Huxley, one of the greatest intellectuals of the last century in my opinion, dedicated a first edition of his remarkable book “Island” to Hofmann with the words: “To Dr. Albert Hofman, the original inventor of the Moksha medicine”. He also got in contact with pychedelic revolutionist Timothy Leary.

Rest in peace Albert Hofmann!