Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, Cornell University
Nobel Laureate, Chemistry
Roald Hoffmann is a professor of chemistry and the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. An internationally respected researcher, he is also a committed teacher and proud to have taught the first-year chemistry course almost without interruption for his entire academic career. He is a graduate of both Columbia University in New York City and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The chemical properties of a substance follow from the properties of its atoms, but this is easier stated than calculated: It takes an impressive amount of ingenuity, skill, and computer resources to derive the structure and other properties of interesting molecules; for his contributions to this important field, Hoffmann was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Hoffmann is known to a wider audience as an essayist, poet, and playwright, and also as the host of the PBS series The World of Chemistry. He is the founder of the Entertaining Science program at Cornelia Street Café in New York City, which brings the excitement and wonder (and, yes, playfulness) of science to an intellectually curious public. Among his many honors and awards, he is unique in holding American Chemical Society Awards in three different subfields: organic (1969) and inorganic chemistry (1982) as well as chemical education (1996).
