Hoffmann, Roald, 1937–, American chemist, b. Złoczów, Poland (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), Ph.D. Harvard, 1962. After receiving his degree and working with Robert Woodward at Harvard (1962–65), he became (1965) a professor at Cornell. His work analyzing the mechanics of chemical reactions led to his sharing the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1981 with Kenichi Fukui of Japan. A poet as well as a chemist, Hoffmann is the author of several books of poetry and essays, including The Metamict State (1987), Gaps and Verges (1990), Memory Effects (1999), and with S. Leibowitz Schmidt, Old Wine, New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition (1997). He also wrote two popular-science books, Chemistry Imagined: Reflections on Science (1993) and The Same and Not the Same (1995)., and in 1993 he hosted a 26-segment television documentary on the Public Broadcasting Service entitled The World of Chemistry.
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