Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary is famous for experimenting with the psychological effects of psychedelic drugs. He conducted under the Harvard Psilocybin Project while the use of LSD and psilocybin was legal in America. The project resulted in Concord Prison experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. He believed that psychedelic drugs used in a controlled environment could help rehabilitate prisoners. He was fired by Harvard due to the controversy surrounding these drugs although some though his experiments yielded some useful data.

he was arrested many times through the 60's and 70's and was an inmate at 29 different prisons.

he popularized phrases like "turn on, tune in, drop out."

He was jailed for 20 years in 1970 and given a psychological test to assign him to an appropriate work detail. This wasn't a great idea as he had designed some of the tests one of them being called the Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test. He answered in a way that would make him seem like a conforming, conventional person with an interest in forestry and gardening. This meant that he was placed in a lower security prison which he escaped from later that same year. he described his escape as a humorous prank and even left a note for authorities to find after he had gone.

He was smuggled out of the country by the weatherman who were a radical left wing organisation founded on the Ann Arbor campus in the University of Michigan. he sough refuge in countries around the world. At one point he was taken in by an arms dealer in Switzerland called Michel Hauchard. Hauchard claimed that he had an "obligation as a gentleman to protect philosophers".

he really wanted to use Leary to make a film.

 Richard Nixon described Leary as  "the most dangerous man in America".

Leary has had many influences on pop culture appearing in lyrics for many bands and quoted in well known films like 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. He was friends with John Lennon and and was the inspiration for his song 'Tomorrow never knows'.