NOBEL LAUREATE HOFFMAN TO LECTURE AT REGIS
Author:
Date: Sunday, November 5, 1989
Page: 3
Section: WEST WEEKLY
WESTON -- Poet and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann will lecture
about "One Culture: What the Arts and Sciences Have in Common" at 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday in the Lower Student Union, Alumnae Hall, at Regis College .
Hoffmann shared the Noble Prize in chemistry in 1981 with Kenichi Fukui
of Japan for work they did independently in applying the theories of quantum
mechanics to predict the course of chemical reactions. At the time, it was
considered by many chemists to be the most important conceptual advance in
their field in the last 20 or 30 years. The theoretical rules that developed
from Hoffmann's work have helped chemists predict whole classes of previously
inexplicable reactions in the lab.
Hoffmann, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science at Cornell
University, has received many of the honors of his profession, including the
National Medal of Science in 1983. In 1990, he will receive the Priestly Medal
of the American Chemical Society, its highest honor. He also writes popular
articles on science, including a column for American Scientist.
Though best known as a chemist, Hoffmann is also a published poet. "The
Metamict State," his first book of verse, was published in 1987 (University of
Central Florida Press). A second collection, "Gaps and Verges," is scheduled
for publication in 1990.
In a review of "The Metamict State" published in the Virginia Quarterly
Review, Peter Harris writes that Hoffmann's work "expands the arena of poetry
by drawing on a lifetime of reflection about the relation between science and
human values, between the behavior of molecules and of people." Hoffmann has
a special interest in the relationship between the arts and sciences and the
similarities in the creative processes of the two disciplines.
In addition to his lecture, Hoffmann will give a poetry reading at 1:30
p.m. Tuesday in the College Hall Foyer. Both the lecture and the poetry
reading are free and open to the public.
Regis College is located at 235 Wellesley St. in Weston. More information
may be obtained by calling the office of public information at (617) 893-1820,
ext. 2039.
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