NUS Centennial Nobel Laureate Public Lecture 3

Professor Roald Hoffmann
Cornell University, Ithaca, USA

Title: "Chemistry's Essential Tension: The Same and Not The Same"
Date: 5 July 2005, Tuesday
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Venue: University Cultural Centre, NUS

Abstract:

Chemistry, poised between the physical and biological universes, doesn't deal with the infinitely small or large. It is very much on the human scale, and from that derives its great interest and its problems. In this generously illustrated lecture several views of chemistry will be presented: First of all, chemistry is, as it has always been, the art, craft, business of substances and their transformations. It is now also the science of molecules, both simple and complex - chemists always think simultaneously of macroscopic substances and microscopic molecules changing. One must also look at people's perception of chemistry, in terms of its benefits, yes, but also in terms of its risks. Indeed, there is no way that a human activity so closely tied to change can be viewed without passion by people. This deeply democratizing science is full of tensions, which will be explored in this lecture. As will the strong element of creation or synthesis in chemistry, which brings chemistry close to the arts.

A copy of the video is available here.

Biodata:

Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Zloczow, Poland. Having survived the war, he came to the U. S. in 1949, and studied chemistry at Columbia and Harvard Universities (Ph.D. 1962). Since 1965 he is at Cornell University, now as the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters. He has received many of the honors of his profession, including the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (shared with Kenichi Fukui).

"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. The pedagogical perspective is very strong in his work.

Notable at the same time is his reaching out to the general public; he participated, for example, in the production of a television course in introductory chemistry titled "The World of Chemistry," shown widely since 1990. And, as a writer, Hoffmann has carved out a land between science, poetry, and philosophy, through many essays and three books, Chemistry Imagined with artist Vivian Torrence, The Same and Not the Same and Old Wine, New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition, with Shira Leibowitz Schmidt.

Hoffmann is also an accomplished poet and playwright. He began writing poetry in the mid-1970s, eventually publishing the first of a number of collections, The Metamict State, in 1987, followed three years later by Gaps and Verges, then Memory Effects (1999), Soliton (2002), and most recently, in Spanish, Catalista. He has also co-written a play with fellow chemist Carl Djerassi, entitled Oxygen, which has been performed worldwide, translated into ten languages.

For further information on Professor Roald Hoffmann and his Nobel Prize achievements, please visit Nobelprize.org.