Rudolf Gelpke

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Rudolf Gelpke (1928–1972) was a Swiss scholar who studied Islam. He earned his doctorate in Islamic Studies at the University of Basel in 1957. He then moved to Iran to teach at the University of Tehran and later taught at the University of Bern in Switzerland. From September 1962 to May 1963, he was an associate professor at UCLA.

While living in Tehran for eight years, he also worked as a freelance writer, translating historical and literary works and publishing his own writings. In one paper, he described self-experiments with drugs like LSD and psilocybin, conducted with friends Albert Hofmann, Heribert Konzett, and Ernst Jünger. In 1966 he published Vom Rausch im Orient und Okzident (On Inebriation in the East and the West) about these experiences. After returning to Switzerland, he suffered a stroke and died in 1972 at the age of 43.