Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the mind-altering drug LSD seventy years ago, has died at his home at the age of 102.

Hofmann died yesterday in Burg im Leimental, the village near Basel where he moved following his retirement in 1971, said Doris Stuker, a municipal clerk.

The hallucinogen inspired, and arguably corrupted, millions in the 1960s hippie generation. For decades after it was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.

“I produced the substance as a medicine. ... It’s not my fault if people abused it,” he once said.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.

He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a repeat of the laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943.

“I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness,” he subsequently wrote in a memo to company bosses.

As he cycled home the strange feelings intensified, he wrote. “Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror. I had the impression I was rooted to the spot. But my assistant told me we were actually going very fast.”

Upon reaching home, Hofmann sat down on a divan and began experiencing what he called “wonderful visions”.

“What I was thinking appeared in colors and in pictures,” he told Swiss television network SF DRS, in a programme marking his 100th birthday two years ago. “It lasted for a couple of hours and then it disappeared.”

Three days later, Hofmann experimented with a larger dose, but recounted that the result was a horror trip.

“The substance which I wanted to experiment with took over me. I was filled with an overwhelming fear that I would go crazy. I was transported to a different world, a different time,” Hofmann wrote.

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