Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD and thus afforded the psychedelic generation and those beyond the pharmaceutical vehicle to turn on, tune in and drop out, has died. He was 102. From the Associated Press:

Albert Hofmann was a synthetic chemist with Sandoz Laboratories, now Novartis, in Switzerland when in 1943 he stumbled on the hallucinatory effects of LSD. After it became seen by Harvard’s Timothy Leary and others in the ’60s as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment, and then as a major recreational drug. “Instead of a wonder child,’LSD suddenly became my problem child,” Hofmann said.

Hofmann died Tuesday morning at his home in Basel, Switzerland, of a heart attack, according to Rick Doblin, the head of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies.

Hofmann also identified and synthesized the active ingredients of peyote mushrooms and a Mexican psychoactive plant called ololiuqui and developed at least three related, non-psychoactive compounds that became widely used in medicine. Those other feats would have been little remembered, however, had he not accidentally gotten a trace amount of an experimental compound called lysergic acid diethylamide on his fingertips and taken the world’s first acid trip.

What a long strange trip it’s been. Thank you Albert Hofmann.