R. Gordon Wasson

Robert Gordon Wasson
Wasson in 1955
Born(1898-09-22)September 22, 1898
Great Falls, Montana
DiedDecember 26, 1986(1986-12-26) (aged 88)
Danbury, Connecticut
NationalityAmerican
Alma materColumbia University Graduate School of Journalism
London School of Economics
AwardsPulitzer Travelling Scholarship
Scientific career
FieldsEthnomycology

Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, and a Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co.[1][2][3][4]

Wasson spent most of his career in banking in his position at J.P. Morgan. Later in his life, despite having little formal training in the field, he turned his interests to the study of hallucinogenic mushrooms, religion, and ethnomycology, publishing papers that received attention and acclaim. In the course of work funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),[5] Wasson made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology. He is perhaps most famous for the problem of the botanical identity of soma–haoma in the ancient Aryan religion. Wasson suggested that "soma" described in the Rigveda was the fly agaric mushroom, and "haoma" in the Avesta was a hallucinogen.

  1. ^ Staff writer. "Mushroom Madness." TIME Magazine (June 16, 1958). Archived from the original.
  2. ^ Tarinas, Joaquim. "Robert Gordon Wasson: Seeking the Magic Mushroom." Imaginaria.org.
  3. ^ Biographyin Tina & R. Gordon Wasson Ethnomycological Collection Archives at Harvard University Herbaria. Archived from the original. Archived 2009-11-27 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Jacobs, Travis Beal. Eisenhower at Columbia. Preface by Eli Ginzberg. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers (2001). pp. 99-100. ISBN 978-0765800367.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference subproject58 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).