Albert Hofman, inventor of LSD, dead at 102

The famed bicycle rider and father of certainly the 20th century’s most problematic “problem child” died of heart failure on April 29th in Basel, Switzerland. According to the NY Times “he took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature.” There can be no doubt that Hofman’s   discovery irrevocably altered the course of the 20th century, influencing several generations of counter-cultures although he often viewed them with contempt and accused the hippies of “hijacking” the potential of LSD.