Shulgin, Alexander

(Sasha)

(1925– )

   Pharmacologist and chemist known for his work on entheogens and especially as a pioneer of psychedelic research, including the synthesis of new hallucinogenic chemicals. At the University of San Francisco, Shulgin completed postdoctoral work in psychiatry and pharmacology, during which time he experimented with mescaline. Shulgin went on to work as research director at BioRad Laboratories as well as a senior research chemist at Dow Chemical Company. He pioneered work on MDMA (ecstasy), and his partner Ann Shulgin used MDMA in psychedelic therapy. In his long and successful career, Shulgin has synthesized and self-tested hundreds of entheogenic chemicals, and his results are published in four books, the most famous of which are PiHKAL (1991) and TiHKAL (1997), both cowritten with Ann Shulgin. He has also contributed to discourse on the term entheogen in the volume Entheogens and the Future of Religion (1997) and works as a scientific consultant for such clients as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).