History
Salvinorin A was first described and named in 1982 by Alfredo Ortega and colleagues in Mexico. They used a combination of spectroscopy and x-ray crystallography to determine the chemical structure of the compound, which was shown to have a bicyclic diterpene structure. Around the same time, Leander Julián Valdés III independently isolated the molecule as part of his PhD research, published in 1983. Valdés named the chemical divinorum, and also isolated an analog that he named divinorum B. The naming was subsequently corrected to salvinorin A and B after the work was published in 1984. Valdés later isolated salvinorin C.
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