Roald Hoffmann

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Roald Hoffmann (2015)

Roald Hoffmann (born July 18, 1937 in Złoczów , Poland , today Ukraine , as Roald Safran ) is an American chemist who, together with the Japanese Kenichi Fukui , received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1981 for the theories developed independently of one another on the course of chemical reactions .

Life

Hoffmann comes from a Jewish family who emigrated to the USA in 1949 after fleeing the Ukraine. His father was murdered by the German occupiers in a labor camp and he himself hid in the attic of a school building with his mother and other relatives. Most of his family members died in the Holocaust.

He attended Columbia College from 1955 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1958. He then studied at Harvard University with a master's degree in physics in 1960 and a doctorate with the thesis Theory of Polyhedral Molecules: Second Quantization and Hypochromism in Helices with William N. Lipscomb in 1962, where he stayed in the Soviet Union for nine months in 1960/61. From 1962 to 1965 he was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. Hoffmann was Associate Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca , New York State , in 1965 and Professor in 1968, where he was also Professor of Physics from 1974. He has now retired.

plant

Hoffmann developed a semi-empirical theory of the electronic structure of molecules from 1962 to 1965 (extended Hückel method from 1963) and, with Robert B. Woodward in 1965, the Woodward-Hoffmann rules , which are standard material in textbooks on organic chemistry and are widely used, for example the pre-calculation of organic synthesis processes.

Hoffmann as a moralist and artist

Roald Hoffmann (2009)

Roald Hoffmann advocates compliance with ethical principles in the science of chemistry. At the World Congress of the International Association of Chemicals IUPAC in Turin in August 2007, he used the task assigned to him to give one of the main lectures for a moral appeal: “ Regardless of whether you are making a gun or a molecule, a painting or a poem, you should always ask: could do I harm someone? "Instead of a speech he made, a first in the history of the Chemist Association, a book written by him play entitled Should've ( dt : Had only!) List. In it, a divided family discusses for an hour the suicide of the dead head of the family who, as a chemist, developed a very efficient synthesis of the neurotoxin saxitoxin , which was used by criminals for mass murder. He uses the story as a mere hook to address a multitude of topics in 26 very short scenes, from the responsibility of the scientist, the Spanish flu , the Pope , Hitler and the Holocaust to the incompatibility of researcher and family life.

He made the autobiographical texts "The Periodic System" by the chemist and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi compulsory reading for his students.

Hoffmann married Eva Börjesson from Lidingö in Sweden in 1960 . You have two children (* 1963 and 1965).

Awards

Hoffmann has received a large number of awards. He has received over 30 honorary doctorates .

The American Chemical Society awarded him the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry in 1969 , the Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry in 1973 (together with Robert B. Woodward) , the ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry in 1982 , the Priestley Medal in 1990 and in 1996 the Pimentel Award in Chemical Education . In 1983 he received the National Medal of Science .

In 1970 he received the award from the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science . In 1981 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Kenichi Fukui.

In 1971 Hoffmann was accepted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1972 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences , which gave him its 1986 NAS Award in Chemical Sciences .

In 1984 he was admitted to the Royal Society as a Foreign Member ; in the same year he also became a member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1985 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences accepted him as a foreign member and in 1988 the then Academy of Sciences of the USSR also accepted him as a foreign member. In 1991 he was awarded the Semyonov gold medal of this academy.

In 1994 Hoffmann received the Centennial Medal from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

In 2000 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , since 2008 the National Academy of Sciences. Since 1998 he has been a corresponding member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences .

In 2008 he was awarded the Lichtenberg Medal of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and in May 2011 he was awarded the Otto Warburg Prize by the University of Bayreuth . Also for 2011 he was awarded the Lomonosov gold medal . In 2017 he is the first recipient of the Primo Levi Prize ; he received the award at the ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of the Society of German Chemists .

Fonts

  • with Vivian Torrence: Chemistry imagined: reflections on science, Smithsonian 1993
  • with RB Woodward: Preservation of Orbital Symmetry, Verlag Chemie 1970
    • English translation: Conservation of orbital symmetry, Verlag, 1970
  • Solids and surfaces: a chemist's view of bonding in extended structures, VCH 1988
  • Roald Hoffmann on the philosophy, art, and science of chemistry, editors Jeffrey Kovac, Michael Weisberg, Oxford UP 2012
  • The metamict state, University of Central Florida Press, Orlando 1987
  • with Shira Leibowitz Schmidt: Old wine, new flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition, Freeman 1997
  • with Carl Djerassi : Oxygen - A piece in two acts . Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2001, ISBN 978-3-527-30460-8 .
  • Being and appearance - reflections on chemistry . Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 1997, ISBN 978-3-527-29418-3 .

literature

  • Interview: Beauty is the joy of the living, of the irregular with Stefan Klein. In: Die Zeit / Leben No. 2007/26, pages 42–45 of June 21, 2007. (Z. Ex. About the beauty of the hemoglobin molecule.)
  • Hilmar Schmundt: Ethics "Chemistry is very poetic", In: Der Spiegel from August 13, 2007, p. 123

Web links

Commons : Roald Hoffmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Roald Hoffmann at academictree.org, accessed on February 12 2018th
  2. ↑ Hoffman, An Extended Hückel Theory. I. Hydrocarbons, J. Chem. Phys. 39, 1963, 1397-1412
  3. ^ Hoffmann, Lipscomb Theory of Polyhedral Molecules. I. Physical Factorizations of the Secular Equation , Journal of Chemical Physics 36, 1962, 2179
  4. ↑ Hoffman, Lipscomb boron hydride: LCAO MO and Resonance Studies , Journal of Chemical Physics 37, 1962, 2872
  5. ↑ Woodward, Hoffman: Stereochemistry of Electrocyclic Reactions, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 87, 1965, 395-397
  6. ↑ Woodward, Hoffmann: The Conservation of Orbital Symmetry, Angew. Chem. Internat. Edit. 8, 1969, 781-853
  7. ^ The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1981. In: nobelprize.org. Retrieved July 1, 2013 .
  8. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Roald Hoffmann. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed November 4, 2015 (Russian).
  9. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Roald Hoffmann (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 15, 2016.
  10. ↑ Karin J. Schmitz: Primo Levi Prize is awarded for the first time. Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, press release from June 6, 2017 at the Science Information Service (idw-online.de), accessed on June 6, 2017.
  11. ↑ press release
personal data
SURNAME Hoffmann, Roald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Złoczów , Poland