Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima

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Born7 November 1908

Died21 September 1989 (aged 80)

KnownforIsolation of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), other contributions

Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima
Born	(1908-11-07)7 November 1908
Died	21 September 1989(1989-09-21) (aged 80)
Occupations	Chemist and microbiologist
Known for	Isolation of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), other contributions

Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima (7 November 1908 – 21 September 1989) was a Brazilian chemist and microbiologist.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7] He is notable in having been the first to isolate the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from natural sources, specifically Mimosa tenuiflora, in 1946, after having observed entheogenic use of vinho de jurema by locals in Brazil.^[3]^[2]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8] de Lima isolated the compound in an impure form and was unaware of its chemical identity, naming it nigerina (nigerine) at the time.^[2]^[3]^[5]^[6]^[8] He also tested and observed its effects in rodents, but did not test it in humans.^[2]^[8] Subsequently, DMT was isolated unequivocally for the first time by M. S. Fish and colleagues in 1955 and its hallucinogenic effects were discovered by Stephen Szara in 1956.^[2]^[3]^[5]^[6] Then, in 1959, using the same plant that de Lima had employed, nigerine was shown to be identical to DMT by Irwin Pachter and colleagues.^[2]^[4]^[3]^[5]^[9] Besides the initial isolation of DMT, de Lima also made many other scientific contributions.^[1]

References

1 2 https://revistainovacao.facepe.br/index.php/revistaFacepe/article/download/78/92/113
1 2 3 4 5 6 Gallimore, A.R. (2025). Death by Astonishment: Confronting the Mystery of the World's Strangest Drug (The DMT Book). St. Martin's Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-250-35776-2. Back in 1946, Brazilian chemist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima visited the Pankararu people in eastern Brazil and was permitted to observe the ancient ritual of jurema, which involved the preparation of a visionary drink known as "vinho de jurema"—wine of jurema.15 [...] Gonçalves de Lima was able to collect and identify the plant used to make the drink as jurema preta (Mimosa hostilis, also known as Mimosa tenuiflora), and as was now standard operating procedure for any newly discovered medicinal or psychoactive plant, immediately went looking for an alkaloid that might explain its visionary effects. He found only one, which he isolated and christened nigerine. After being injected with about 70mg of the alkaloid, experimental rats trembled and struggled to walk before outright convulsions and paralysis set in, with the animals succumbing after an hour or so. [...] Unfortunately, Gonçalves de Lima didn't venture to inject nigerine into his own veins. Nor was he able to definitively determine its chemical structure, and it wasn't until more than a decade later that medicinal chemist Irwin Pachter, using samples of jurema preta provided by Gonçalves de Lima, was able to fully characterize the molecule: an alkaloid of the tryptamine family, specifically, N,N-dimethyltryptamine, more commonly known simply as DMT. 17
1 2 3 4 5 McKenna D, Riba J (February 2015). "New World Tryptamine Hallucinogens and the Neuroscience of Ayahuasca". Curr Top Behav Neurosci. doi:10.1007/7854_2015_368. PMID 25655746. In 1946, Brazilian chemist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima isolated a single alkaloid from the roots of a related species, Mimosa tenuiflora (juremapreta), which he named nigerine. Although this initial isolation was only partially pure, it was subsequently shown to be identical to DMT when Gonçalves de Lima provided a group of American researchers with a sample of M. tenuiflora root bark. These workers were able to unequivocally isolate DMT from the sample in 0.57% yield (Pachter et al. 1959). The history of this significant discovery—the first identification of DMT as a naturally occurring alkaloid—has been exhaustively reviewed by Ott (1998). Although as Ott points out, priority for the first unequivocal identification of DMT as a natural compound must be given to Fish et al. (1955) who reported DMT in the seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina (under its former name, Piptadenia peregrina).
1 2 3 Domínguez-Clavé E, Soler J, Elices M, Pascual JC, Álvarez E, de la Fuente Revenga M, Friedlander P, Feilding A, Riba J (September 2016). "Ayahuasca: Pharmacology, neuroscience and therapeutic potential". Brain Res Bull. 126 (Pt 1): 89–101. doi:10.1016/j.brainresbull.2016.03.002. PMID 26976063. DMT is a rather common alkaloid, present not only in P. viridis but also in over fifty other plant species pertaining to various families (Ott, 1993). It was first isolated from the roots of Mimosa tenuiflora by the Brazilian chemist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima in 1946, who was not aware of its chemical identity and named it nigerine (cited in McKenna and Riba, 2015). This alkaloid was later found to be identical to DMT by another group (Pachter et al., 1959). The first unequivocal identification of DMT as a natural compound was conducted by Fish and coworkers (Fish et al., 1955). These authors identified DMT in the seeds of the tree Anadenanthera peregrina, which they were studying as the putative source of a psychotropic snuff. The presence of DMT in the seeds caught the attention of Stephen Szára, who conducted the first administration studies in humans and found that DMT had powerful visionary effects (Szara, 1956).
1 2 3 4 5 Ott J (1998) Pharmahuasca, anahuasca, vinho de Jurema: human pharmacology of oral DMT + harmine. In: Müller-Ebeling C (ed) Special: psychoactivity. Yearbook for Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness, 6/7 (1997–1998). Berlin, VWB. https://catbull.com/alamut/Bibliothek/1997_ott_7105_1.pdf
1 2 3 4 Wolff, Tom John (2020). "Research about DMT and ayahuasca". The Touristic Use of Ayahuasca in Peru. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. p. 63–81. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-29373-4_9. ISBN 978-3-658-29372-7. Retrieved 22 March 2026. The first synthesizing of DMT took place in 1931 by the Canadian chemist Richard Helmuth Fredrick Manske (Manske, 1931, Ott, 1998, McKenna and Riba, 2015). Before, DMT was found in natural sources in 1946 by the Brazilian microbiologist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima. He called it nigerine, when he isolated 0.51% of the alcaloid from a root-bark of Mimosa tenuiflora, which he had collected at the town Arcoverde in the state Pernambuco. De Melo isolated 0.98% of nigerine in 1955 from Jurema preta (De Melo, 1955, mentioned in Ott, 1998, p.10). Then in 1959, when Gonçalves de Lima provided a sample of Jurema preta to a US pharmaceutical company, 0,57% of DMT was isolated (Pachter et al., 1959). Nigerine might have been an impure form of DMT. In between DMT was isolated unequivocally the first time from the seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina by M.S. Fish (Fish et al., 1955). The first investigations on the administration of DMT in humans, which were conducted by Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist Stephen Szára in 1956, found strong effects such as mood changes, thought changes, visual effects, increased blood pressure and heart rate, tremor, mydriasis, tingling interoceptive sensation.
1 2 Tittarelli R, Mannocchi G, Pantano F, Romolo FS (January 2015). "Recreational use, analysis and toxicity of tryptamines". Curr Neuropharmacol. 13 (1): 26–46. doi:10.2174/1570159X13666141210222409. PMC 4462041. PMID 26074742. Dimethyl-tryptamine (DMT) was first synthesized in 1931 by Richard Helmuth Fredrick Manske, but it was discovered as a natural product only in 1946, when a brazilian chemist and microbiologist, Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima, isolated it from the root bark of Mimosa tenuiflora. Since 1955 DMT has been found in at least fifty species of plants belonging to ten families [28], in four species of animals, and in three species of mammals.
1 2 3 de Lima, O. G. (1946). Observações sobre o" vinho da Jurema" utilizado pelos indios Pancaru de Tacaratu (Pernambuco). Arq. Inst. Pesq. Agron. Recife, 4 (1946), pp. 45–80. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=11438840874591857579 https://etnolinguistica.wdfiles.com/local--files/biblio%3Alima-1946-observacoes/Lima_1946_ObsVinhoJuremaPancaru.pdf
↑ Pachter, Irwin J.; Zacharias, David E.; Ribeiro, Oscar (1959). "Indole Alkaloids of Acer saccharinum (the Silver Maple), Dictyoloma incanescens, Piptadenia colubrina, and Mimosa hostilis". The Journal of Organic Chemistry. 24 (9): 1285–1287. doi:10.1021/jo01091a032. ISSN 0022-3263. Retrieved 22 March 2026.

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