Albert Hofmann, father of mind-altering drug LSD, dies at 102

GENEVA � Albert Hofmann, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery grew into a notorious "problem child," has died. He was 102. Hofmann died Tuesday at his home in Burg im Leimental, said Doris Stuker, a municipal clerk in the village near Basel where Hofmann moved following his retirement in 1971. Hofmann's hallucinogen inspired � and arguably corrupted � millions in the 1960s hippie generation. For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention. "I produced the substance as a medicine. ... It's not my fault if people abused it," he once said. The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel. He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a repeat of the laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943.


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