"The Commonalities and Differences between the Arts and Sciences"

(in collaboration with the Richard E. Juday Program Enhancement Fund in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Division of Biological Sciences)

8:00 PM Monday, March 21, 2016
Dennison Theatre

"Two New Games for Carbon"

3:10 PM Monday, March 21, 2016
Gallagher Business Building Room 123

Please join us for a seminar and lecture with Roald Hoffmann, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He earned a Ph.D. at Harvard in 1962, and in 1965 began teaching at Cornell. During his brilliant academic career, he has published two books in his research field, The Conservation of Orbital Symmetry (1970) and Solids and Surfaces: A Chemist’s View of Bonding in Extended Structures (1988). Including work done in 2016, he has authored 610 scientific papers on a wide variety of projects. His research interests are in the electronic structure of stable and unstable molecules across the periodic table, and of transition states in reactions. He applies a variety of quantum chemical computational methods as well as qualitative arguments to problems of structure and reactivity of both organic and inorganic molecules of medium size and to extended systems in one-, two-, and three dimensions. At Cornell, he devoted himself to undergraduate teaching and regularly taught first-year general chemistry. He also taught chemistry courses to non-scientists and graduate courses in bonding theory and quantum mechanics.

Professor Hoffmann has made a special effort to reach out to the general public, most notably participating in the production of a television course on introductory chemistry, The World of Chemistry, shown widely since 1990. He has written many popular and scholarly articles on science and other subjects. His poetry has appeared in various literary magazines. A half-dozen of his poetry collections have appeared thus far. He also has co-written a play with fellow chemist Carl Djerassi, Oxygen (2001), which has been performed worldwide and translated into ten languages. A second play, Should’ve, has had several workshop productions since 2006. A new play, We Have Something that Belongs to You, had its first workshop production in 2009. He has received numerous honorary degrees and other honors and awards. He has lectured all over the world. If any scientist today can be said to be perpetuating the legacy of Galileo Galilei in actively promoting the sciences, arts, and humanities as the co-equal and irreplaceable foundations of our civilization, it is Roald Hoffmann.

In addition, that evening Professor Hoffmann will give a lecture at 8:00 p.m. in the Dennison Theatre: “The Commonalities and Differences between the Arts and Sciences.”

The seminar and lecture are free and open to the public.