Medium Biography

Roald Hoffmann was born in Złoczów, Poland, in 1937 as Roald Safran.  Having survived the Nazi occupation, he arrived in the U.S. in 1949, after several years of post-war wandering in Europe.  He graduated from Stuyvesant High School, Columbia University, and proceeded to take his Ph.D. in 1962, at Harvard University, working with W. N. Lipscomb and Martin Gouterman.  Dr. Hoffmann stayed on at Harvard University from 1962-1965, as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows.  Since 1965, he has been at Cornell University, where he is now the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus and Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus.

Professor Hoffmann is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.  He has been elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, the Indian National Science Academy, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Nordrhein-Westfällische Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Leopoldina.  He has received numerous honors, including over thirty honorary degrees.  He is the only person ever to have received the American Chemical Society's awards in three different specific subfields of chemistry — the A. C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry, the Award in Inorganic Chemistry, and the Pimentel Award in Chemical Education. As well as three other ACS awards.  In 1981, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kenichi Fukui. He received the National Science Board’s Public Service Award and the National Medal of Science. His name was used as a clue in the New York Times March 12, 2011 Crossword Puzzle, and since then again – this he considers his pinnacle.

"Applied theoretical chemistry" is the way Roald Hoffmann likes to characterize the particular blend of computations stimulated by experiment and the construction of generalized models, of frameworks for understanding, that is his contribution to chemistry.  In more than 600 scientific articles and two books he has taught the chemical community new and useful ways to look at the geometry and reactivity of molecules, from organic through inorganic to infinitely extended structures.

Roald Hoffmann, one of the most highly cited chemists of all time, continues very active in research. In 2017 and 18 he has or will have published 25 articles, some of which represent, he thinks, his best work in decades. “How nice”, he says “to have postdocs take me into directions I could not have imagined.” The title of one of his  articles, “The Chemical Imagination at Work in Very Tight Places,” epitomizes his recent interests and his style.

Dr. Hoffmann participated in the production of a television course about chemistry.  "The World of Chemistry" is a series of 26 half-hour programs developed at the University of Maryland and produced by Richard Thomas.  Dr. Hoffmann is the Presenter for the series, which has been aired on PBS beginning in 1990, and has been shown widely abroad.

Roald Hoffmann has also written popular and scholarly articles on science and other subjects.  His poetry has appeared in various literary magazines. Two collections, entitled The Metamict State (1987) and Gaps and Verges (1990), were published by the University of Florida Press; Memory Effects, was published in 1999 by the Calhoun Press of Columbia College, Chicago. At the end of 2002 two poetry collections were published by Roald Hoffmann, Soliton, by Truman State University Press, and a volume of selected poems translated into Spanish, Catalísta, by Huerga y Fierro in Madrid. A bilingual Russian/English book of poems, Izbranniye Stichotvorenia were published in 2011 in Moscow by Tekst.

A book of his philosophical writings, Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy, Art and Science of Chemistry was published by Oxford University Press in 2011, edited by Jeffrey Kovac and Michael Weisberg. A book coedited by Roald Hoffmann and I. B. Whyte,  Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and  Science was published by Oxford University Press in 2011. In 2018, a Japanese language children’s book by RH, Zassou (Weeds), was published in Tokyo by Imajinsha.

In 1993 the Smithsonian Institution Press published Chemistry Imagined. A unique art/science/literature collaboration of Roald Hoffmann with artist Vivian Torrence, Chemistry Imagined reveals the creative and humanistic sparks of chemistry. A series of thirty collages by Torrence paired with short essays, personal commentary, and poems by Hoffmann evokes the magic of the molecular science. The book has been translated into Spanish and Chinese.  In 1995, Columbia University Press published Hoffmann's The Same and Not the Same. This book points to the dualities that lie under the surface of chemistry, and that endow this seemingly quiet central science with tension.  There are German, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and two Chinese translations of this book.  In 1997, W.H. Freeman published Old Wine, New Flasks; Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition, by Roald Hoffmann and Shira Leibowitz Schmidt. This book looks in a nonconfrontational (and witty) way at how science and religion, dealing with the mundane, are both led to eternal and important questions of authority, purity, identity, the natural and the unnatural.  A Spanish translation of this book has appeared.

A play, Oxygen, by Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann premiered in the U.S. at the San Diego Repertory Theatre in 2001, and had many productions worldwide since. Oxygen has been translated into a dozen languages. A second play by Roald Hoffmann, Should’ve, has had two productions and several readings since 2006; it has been translated into Russian, Spanish, German, and Hebrew. A new autobiographical play, Something That Belongs to You,” has had several staged readings, and has been translated into German and Japanese. It had a three-week run in Japan in Japanese, in May and June of 2017, and was shown nationwide on NHK TV.

In 2020, Roald Hoffmann and Jean-Paul Malrieu published a series of three linked essays “Simulation vs. Understanding: A Tension in Quantum Chemistry and Beyond,” in Angewandte Chemie. There is a wave of “artificial intelligence” breaking over the profession, but also society as whole. We present an argument that better numbers hardly lead to greater understanding. And try to sketch a future of consilience, in an attempt to see how we can construct a reasonable future for theory and simulation.

In 2020, Roald Hoffmann also published a new volume of poems, “Constants of the Motion.”

"Applied theoretical chemistry" is the way Roald Hoffmann likes to characterize the particular blend of computations stimulated by experiment and the construction of generalized models, of frameworks for understanding, that is his contribution to chemistry. In more than 500 scientific articles and two books he has taught the chemical community new and useful ways to look at the geometry and reactivity of molecules, from organic through inorganic to infinitely extended structures.

Dr. Hoffmann participated in the production of a television course about chemistry. "The World of Chemistry" is a series of 26 half-hour programs developed at the University of Maryland and produced by Richard Thomas. Dr. Hoffmann is the Presenter for the series, which has been aired on PBS beginning in 1990, and has been shown widely abroad.

Roald Hoffmann has also written popular and scholarly articles on science and other subjects. His poetry has appeared in various literary magazines. Two collections, entitled "The Metamict State" (1987) and "Gaps and Verges" (1990), were published by the University of Florida Press; "Memory Effects," was published in 1999 by the Calhoun Press of Columbia College, Chicago. At the end of 2002 two poetry collections were published by Roald Hoffmann, “Soliton,” by Truman State University Press, and volume of selected poems translated into Spanish, “Catalísta.”

In 1993 the Smithsonian Institution Press published "Chemistry Imagined." A unique art/science/literature collaboration of Roald Hoffmann with artist Vivian Torrence, "Chemistry Imagined" reveals the creative and humanistic sparks of chemistry. A series of thirty collages by Torrence paired with short essays, personal commentary, and poems by Hoffmann evokes the magic of the molecular science. The book has been translated into Spanish and Chinese. In 1995, Columbia University Press published Hoffmann's "The Same and Not the Same." This book points to the dualities that lie under the surface of chemistry, and that endow this seemingly quiet central science with tension. There are German, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese (in press) and two Chinese translations of this book. In 1997, W.H. Freeman published "Old Wine, New Flasks; Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition," by Roald Hoffmann and Shira Leibowitz Schmidt. This book looks in a nonconfrontational (and witty) way at how science and religion, dealing with the mundane, are both led to eternal and important questions of authority, purity, identity, the natural and the unnatural. Spanish and Italian translations of this book will appear.

A play, "Oxygen," by Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann premiered in the U.S. at the San Diego Repertory Theatre in 2001, and had productions in London, East Lansing, MI, Madison, WI, Columbus, OH, Germany, Korea, Japan and Toronto. “Oxygen” has been translated into many languages. A second play by Roald Hoffmann, "Should’ve," has had two workshop productions and several readings since 2006, and a new play, "We Have Something That Belongs to You," had its first production in 2009.