Richard Alpert (Ram Dass): Harvard psychologist who experimented with psychedelic drugs and became one of America’s most prominent and respected spiritual leaders
BMJ January 31, 2020 Rebecca Wallersteiner 1 citation
Richard Alpert, a psychologist trained at Stanford and a Harvard professor, became a central figure in the psychedelic 1960s after befriending Timothy Leary. Despite an unpromising early life as the son of a prominent Boston lawyer, Alpert joined Leary's Harvard psilocybin project, where they administered psilocybin and later LSD to students, ministers, musicians, and prisoners. The transcendent effects of these drugs led Alpert to question consciousness and the basis of his life, embodying the countercultural spirit of the era.