BORN: October 22, 1920, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
DIED: May 31, 1996, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
IN 1960, TWO PSYCHOLOGISTS AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY BEGAN AN UNUSUAL STUDY THAT WOULD, IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY, CHANGE THE COURSE OF WESTERN CULTURE.
The two academics gave groups of students controlled amounts of LSD and psilocybin – a psychedelic drug found in certain types of mushroom – and carefully monitored their reactions on a host of different criteria. It was a strange program, and after a couple of years university administrators began to have serious doubts about the study. Their main concern? The psychologists were taking LSD too.
No-one knew it at the time, but one of the most conservative institutions in America had just triggered the 1960s drug boom. And at the centre of…
