R. Gordon Wasson

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.

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), 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. Provided by Wikipedia