R. Gordon Wasson was a New York banker, then a vice president of J.P. Morgan & Co., and an amateur student of mushrooms in culture. His article “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” ran in Life on 13 May 1957 and described a night vigil on 29–30 June 1955 led by a Mazatec healer the article called “Eva Mendez” (Life, 1957). She was María Sabina.
He worked with his wife, the pediatrician Valentina Wasson. They first reached Huautla de Jiménez in August 1953 (García de Teresa, 2022), and in 1957 they published the two-volume Mushrooms, Russia and History (Wasson and Wasson, 1957). Wasson also brought the French mycologist Roger Heim into the work, which led to Albert Hofmann’s 1958 psilocybin papers. In 1979 he was a co-author of the note that coined “entheogen” (Ruck et al., 1979).
His legacy is contested. Life altered names and places, but visitors still found the town, and several papers say he published without María Sabina’s consent (Magar et al., 2026). In 2025 the Mycological Society of America reported renaming its Wasson award over harm to Indigenous communities (MSA committee, 2025).
Sources
- Seeking the Magic Mushroom, Life, 13 May 1957
- García de Teresa, 2022
- Magar et al., 2026, Journal of Psychopharmacology
- Mycological Society of America committee, 2025, IMA Fungus
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