What a long, strange trip he made possible

Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann has died at his home in Basel. Hoffmann is, of course, the researcher who first synthesised (6aR,9R)-N,N-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo-[4,3-fg]quinoline-9-carboxamide (though like me, you probably just call it "LSD" when you ask for it down at the shop). Hofmann also took the world's first ever trip, entirely by accident. His skin absorbed a bit of the new substance and, suddenly, there he was, wearing a headband and playing hacky-sack at a Grateful Dead concert. (He repeated the experience deliberately a few days later, no doubt all in the cause of science.)

Nary a stitch of tie-die on him!
(Photo by Philip H. Bailey, shown here under a Creative Commons licence.)

Dr. Hofmann was 102. I had no idea he was still alive; I'd just assumed he died long ago. Though he looked like (and indeed was) a bürgerlicher Swiss industrial scientist, he retained throughout his life a keen and not altogether non-participatory interest in psychotropic compounds. Who knows, maybe we'd all live past 100 if we'd just drop more blotter.