InfoPersons, originating from Poland
Roald Hoffmann
Born: July 18, 1937 in Złoczów, Poland (since 1945 Ukraine)He is a Polish-American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
As a child of Jewish parents, Hoffmann survived the Second World War under severe circumstances. His family emigrated to the United States in 1949.
In 1960 he earned his master degree from the Harvard University. In 1962, he obtained a doctorate in chemistry, working under the direction of another Nobel laureate, William N. Lipscomb.
He worked in the field of theoretical chemistry. From 1968 on he was a professor at the Cornell University in Ithaca in the USA, until he retired.
Hoffmann's research and interests were the theory of chemical reactions. Along with R.B. Woodward he developed rules for pericyclic reactions (the so-called Woodward-Hoffmann rule) and extended them to ionic reactions.
In 1981 he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Hoffmann is also a writer and poet, the author of a collection of poetry.
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