The International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine (ISOM) held its inaugural meeting April 29, 1994 in Vancouver, Canada. The event brought together the many orthomolecular organizations already active worldwide.

Founders: Abram Hoffer PhD MD FRCP(C), Steven Carter, Jack Kay - Canada

President 1996-1999: Oslim Malina PhD, MD - Brazil
President 1999-2009: Gert Schuitemaker PhD, BSc Phm - Netherlands
President 2012: Dr. Atsuo Yanagisawa - Japan

For a detailed historical overview, read the scientific memoirs of dr. Abram Hoffer.

1954. Publication of the first double-blind, placebo-controlled study in psychiatry: with niacin an niacinamide for schizophrenia. Clancy J, Hoffer A, Lucy J, Osmond H, Smythies J & Stefaniak B: Design and planning in psychiatric research as illustrated by the Weyburn Chronic Nucleotide Project. Bull Men Clinic, 18:147-153, 1954. [Later published in a major journal: Hoffer A, Osmond H, Callbeck MJ & Kahan I: Treatment of schizophrenia with nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. J Clin Exper Psychopathol 18:131-158, 1957]

1956. Publication of the book of the discoverer of vitamin B5, Roger J . Williams: Biochemical Individuality: The Basis for the Genetotrophic Concept.

1957-1960. Additionally five double-blind controlled, randomized studies with niacin for schizophrenia. These studies all showed a major improvement in the two year recovery rate, from 35 to 75 procent.

Beginning sixties. Linus Pauling reads the book How to live with Schizophrenia of Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond. After reading he changed his mind from retiring into entering the new field of megavitamin therapy.

1967. First issue of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (at that time the International Journal of Schizophrenia).

1968. Linus Pauling coined the term 'orthomolecular' in his publication in Science: Orthomolecular Psychiatry. Varying the concentrations of substances normally present in the human body may control mental disease. Science. 1968 Apr 19;160(825):265-71.

1974. Corroboration of the findings of Hoffer and Osmond by the double blind study of Wittenborn (Arch Gen Psychiatry 1974; 31:547-52).

1987. Hoffer-Vickar Chair of Psychiatry, a Unit of Orthomolecular Clinical Research, at the Ben Gurion University in Tel Aviv (Israel), held by prof. Robert H. Belmaker.

1990. Dr. Linus Pauling presented at the 19th Nutritional Medicine Today Conference in Vancouver.

1994. The foundation of the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine.
August 19th. Dr. Linus Pauling passed away.
2002. Publication of dr. Bruce Ames in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reviewing high-dose vitamin therapy in the view of the newest findings in genetics. He mentions the article of Linus Pauling, who already in 1968 hypothesized that much mental disease may be due to insufficient concentrations of particular biochemicals in the brain and that some brain dysfunction may be due to mutations.

2006. Dr. Jeanne Drisko gets the first academic orthomolecular medical chair, the Hugh D. Riordan Professorship in Orthomolecular Medicine at the Kansas University Medical Center.

2008. The Linus Pauling Event in 'Schloss Anholt' (Germany). In honor of the publication of the Science-paper on orthomolecular psychiatry by dr. Linus Pauling 40 years ago.

2009. May 27th. Dr. Abram Hoffer passed away.

2011. 40th Orthomolecular Medicine Today conference in Toronto.

2012. Atsuo Yanagisawa 3d president of ISOM.