Hoffmann, Roald

Professor of Chemistry, Cornell University.

Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Poland. After surviving the Nazi occupation, the remnants of the family emigrated to the U.S. in 1949. Hoffmann received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1962 with William N. Lipscombe and M. P. Gouterman, remaining at Harvard as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows for three years. In 1965 Hoffmann accepted a position at Cornell where he is the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor in Humane Letters.

In 1981 Hoffmann was awarded the Nobel Prize jointly with Kenichi Fukui, "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions." A writer of poetry, nonfiction, and plays as well as a theortetical chemist, Hoffmann builds bridges between art and science, as well as within his own chemistry. He is proud of being a teacher.