Reading the obits for the scientist Albert Hofmann who died last month, one could not but be struck by the whole accidental nature of many of man's discoveries. Just like when penicillin was "discovered", so to the discovery of LSD seems like total happenstance.
"His first experience was "rather agreeable". As he worked in the Sandoz research laboratory in Basel in Switzerland on April 16th 1943, isolating and synthesising the unstable alkaloids of the ergot fungus, Albert Hofmann began to feel a slight light-headedness. He could not think why.
His lab was shared with two other chemists; frugality and company had taught him careful habits. And this was a man whose doctoral thesis had revolved around the gastrointestinal juices of the vineyard snail."
Amazing too that it was work on a fungus that paved the way to a psychedelic revolution.
