Alexander Shulgin

Alexander Shulgin

Alexander "Sasha" Theodore Shulgin (born June 17, 1925) is an American pharmacologist, chemist, artist, author and drug developer.

Shulgin is credited with the popularization of MDMA ("ecstasy") and its introduction to psychologists in the late 1970s for psychopharmaceutical use. In subsequent years, Shulgin discovered, synthesized, and bioassayed over 230 psychoactive compounds, and evaluated them for their psychedelic and/or entactogenic potential. In 1991 and 1997, he and his wife Ann Shulgin authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL, extensively describing their work and personal experiences with these psychoactive drugs, subdivided into two classes of organic compounds - phenethylamines and tryptamines. Shulgin performed seminal work into the descriptive synthesis of many of these compounds. Some of Shulgin's noteworthy discoveries include compounds of the 2C* family (such as 2C-B) and compounds of the DOx family (such as DOM). Due in part to Shuglin's extensive work in the field of psychedelic research and psychedelic drugs, he has since been dubbed as "The Godfather of Psychedelics"