Timothy Francis Leary, along with Dr. Richard Alpert (known later as Ram Dass), was at the center of the 1960s drug culture and psychedelic revolution. Born October 22, 1920, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Leary was a typical overachieving child of middle-class parents. He attended a number of schools, garnering degrees from the University of Alabama (A.B., 1943) and the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D. in psychology, 1950).

Leary's life changed in 1959, when he left his job as assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley and accepted a position as lecturer in psychology at Harvard University. At Harvard, Leary met Richard Alpert and, backed by the United States government, the two began conducting experiments with psilocybin, a hallucinogenic mushroom. In 1963, Leary left Harvard to found the League of Spiritual Discovery, a group dedicated to exploring the relationship between drugs and consciousness. The group's headquarters, in an upstate...