Timothy Francis Leary, alongside Dr. Richard Alpert—later renowned as Ram Dass—stood at the vibrant heart of the 1960s drug culture and psychedelic revolution. Born on October 22, 1920, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Leary emerged as an archetypal overachiever, nurtured by his middle-class upbringing. His academic journey was marked by numerous institutions, ultimately earning him degrees from the University of Alabama (A.B., 1943) and the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D. in psychology, 1950).

The trajectory of Leary’s life took a pivotal turn in 1959 when he departed from his role as an assistant professor at Berkeley and embraced a new position as a psychology lecturer at Harvard University. It was at Harvard that Leary crossed paths with Richard Alpert, and together, with governmental support, they embarked on groundbreaking experiments with psilocybin, the hallucinogenic mushroom. In 1963, Leary bid farewell to Harvard to establish the League of Spiritual Discovery, an organization dedicated to delving into the interplay between drugs and the human mind. Their headquarters, nestled in an opulent mansion in upstate New York, became a beacon for writers, artists, and philosophers, many of whom identified as spiritual seekers themselves.

Throughout the 1960s, Leary emerged as a fervent proponent of LSD, zealously promoting it in almost mystical terms. His 1968 work, High Priest, unveils a vivid tapestry of his psychedelic experiences. Yet, his persistent rallying cry for individuals to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," coupled with flagrant defiance of drug laws, positioned him unfavorably with governmental authorities. By 1970, Leary faced dual sentences of ten-year federal imprisonment, one in Houston, Texas, and the other in Santa Ana, California, for marijuana possession. Following a dramatic prison escape, he was eventually apprehended in Afghanistan and returned to the U.S., where he served a reduced sentence.

In the twilight of his life, Leary metamorphosed repeatedly, leveraging his counter-culture icon status to explore and advocate for cybernetics, exo-psychology, space exploration, cryonics, and naturally, the consciousness-elevating attributes of LSD and other substances. During this transformative era, Leary—the self-proclaimed futurist—delved into the philosophical potential of computer technology, crafting software programs and speaking on the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

After a valiant struggle with advanced prostate cancer, Leary passed away on May 31, 1996, in Beverly Hills, California. Contrary to his earlier aspirations for cryogenic preservation, his remains were not frozen. Instead, his ashes were encased in a capsule and launched into the cosmos, destined to orbit Earth before ultimately incinerating within the planet's atmosphere. His posthumous work, Design for Dying, partially recounts his meticulously "planned death" and was published in 1997.