Harold Alexander Abramson (November 27, 1899 – September 29, 1980) was an American physician (clinical allergist), remembered as a proponent of the junk science of therapeutic LSD.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Abramson traveled widely, and was affiliated with laboratories at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, as well as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin.
Returning to P&S, he became assistant professor of physiology from 1935 to 1942[2] and joined the staff at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City in 1941, cultivating an interest in asthma and pulmonary disease, and where he was the first ever to use aerosolized penicillin.
[3] In 1942, the Long Island Biological Laboratories research project, headed by Harold Abramson, was established in part with funds from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and support from the War Department.
[4] He was on military leave from 1943 to August 1946, and during this period he earned the United States Army's Legion of Merit "for vital contributions to the Chemical Warfare Service and thus to the war effort" for work involving aerosol penicillin.
He is said to be the person who influenced many members of the Cybernetics Group to turn to LSD, including Frank Fremont-Smith, head of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation.