Gordon A. Alles (November 26, 1901 – January 21, 1963), was an American chemist and pharmacologist who did extensive research on the isolation and properties of insulin for the treatment of diabetics. He is also credited with discovering and publishing the physiological effects of amphetamine and methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA).On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine. Nicolas Rasmussen (2008). He is the first person to have prepared amphetamine sulfate, although not the amphetamine freebase. Alles first reported the physiological properties of amphetamine as a synthetic analog of ephedrine, and therefore received credit for this discovery.Staff, (1963) Gordon A. Alles. The Month at Caltech. Engineering and Science, 26 (5). pp. 18-19. ISSN 0013-7812] He enjoyed large royalties from Smith, Kline & French (SKF) because he sold his patent rights for amphetamine to the company and it enjoyed large sales. Several popular products sold by SKF contained amphetamine, including Benzedrine pills and inhalers, Dexedrine pills and Dexamyl tablets. Counterfeit drugs such as Profetamine (a generic form of amphetamine sulfate) appeared, aiming to circumvent Alles' 'weak' patent.
Career Alles received his BS (1922), MS (1924), and PhD (1926) degrees from California Institute of Technology (Caltech). From 1931 he was a lecturer in pharmacology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, and from 1951 he was Professor in Residence of pharmacology at UCLA. From 1934 to 1951 he was a consultant for the SKF laboratories.University of California History. Los Angeles: Departments. He was owner of the Alles Chemical Research Laboratories in Pasadena, and had been a Caltech research associate since 1939. In 1958 he gave Caltech a gift of $350,000 which financed, in large part, the five-story Gordon A. Alles Laboratory for Molecular Biology.
Alles was primarily interested in natural and synthetic drug chemicals and the relationship between their molecular structures and their biological actions.Schultes, Richard Evans; Ethnobotany: Evolution of a discipline In 1928 he discovered the physiological properties of benzedrine (amphetamine) and he contributed to its development as a drug. This drug and dextroamphetamine, which was developed from the discovery, have had worldwide medical use as general brain stimulants.
Alles discovered the psychoactive effects of 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), a mescaline analogue and the first synthetic psychedelic as well as the first entactogen, in 1930. He co-discovered MMDA (5-methoxy-MDA), another one of the earliest synthetic psychedelics, in 1962, with psychedelic chemist Alexander Shulgin independently synthesizing the drug the same year. "This is the compound that I had first completed in 1962, and had named it MMDA, and had begun the exploring of it when I heard that Dr. Gordon A. Alles, a professor of pharmacology at U. C. L. A. who had his own private laboratory in Los Angeles, had also synthesized it in 1962, had also named it MMDA, and had also begun exploring it. We made a date to meet and share ideas, and then he died, at the age of 62, in 1963."
Alles also spent time in Tahiti, where he was investigating the possibilities of developing tranquilizers from a native drink called kava.
Quote from On Speed
See also List of psychedelic chemists
References