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History
How a Sandoz team in Basel named and made psilocybin, and what followed.
March 1958
Hofmann, Heim, Brack and Kobel named psilocybin in a March 1958 note in Experientia, from the Mexican mushroom Psilocybe mexicana.
A 2026 review says the mycologist Roger Heim cultivated Psilocybe mexicana in France and gave a quantity to Hofmann at Sandoz.
November 1958
A November 1958 paper announced psilocybin’s structure and synthesis. A 1959 paper gave psilocybin and psilocin in crystalline form.
Sandoz supplied psilocybin to researchers as Indocybin. Reviews disagree on the start year, and a research supply was not a medicine approval.
1970–1971
The US listed psilocybin in Schedule I on 27 October 1970, and the 1971 UN Convention followed. Sources differ on when Sandoz stopped supplying it.
The full history
Our guide dates each paper and law from its record, and says where the sources disagree.
Educational only. Pictures are Shroomverse AI illustrations and film stills.