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Contact: Martha Spera, 973-655-4333

MONTCLAIR, NJ--One of the nation's leading theoretical chemists, Nobel Laureate Dr. Roald Hoffmann, will present "Chemistry's Essential Tension: The same and not the same" on Thursday, April 6, as part of the Margaret and Herman Sokol Science Lecture Series at Montclair State University.

A graduate of Columbia and Harvard universities, Hoffmann is the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at Cornell University, where he's taught for more than four decades. He had received numerous honors for his work, including the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Japanese Professor Kenichi Fukui for their theories on the course of chemical reactions.

Born to Jewish parents in eastern Poland in 1937, Hoffmann survived the war and emigrated to the United States in 1949. As a junior fellow at Harvard, where he earned a master's degree in physics in 1960 and a Ph.D. in chemical physics in 1962, Hoffmann collaborated with renowned organic chemist Robert Burns Woodward who received the 1965 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He died in 1979. Hoffmann is the only person to ever receive the American Chemical Society's awards in three fields of chemistry--organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry and chemical education.

Elected to the National Academy of Science in 1972, Hoffmann has published more than 500 papers in the chemistry field as well as essays, non-fiction, poems and plays. His first poem was published in 1984 and work has been translated into French, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish. "I write poetry to penetrate the world around me, and to comprehend my reactions to it," he once said. "Some of the poems are about science, some not. I don't stress the science poems over others because science is only one part of my life."

Hoffmann also co-authored Old Wine, New Flasks; Reflections on Science and

Jewish Tradition. Published in 1997, the book explores how science and religion both examine questions of authority, purity, identity, the natural and unnatural.

Hoffmann's lecture will begin at 8 p.m. in the Alexander Kasser Theater on the Montclair State campus. Tickets are $10 and are available by calling the MSU Box Office at 973-655-5112. The lecture is free for MSU faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Through a generous gift from Margaret and Herman Sokol, the Margaret and Herman Sokol Science Lectures have been established to allow members of the University and surrounding communities to gain a greater appreciation and expanded knowledge of important issues in science.

Each semester, a speaker of national or international renown is invited to MSU to meet with faculty and students and conduct an evening seminar. Speakers are selected on the basis of interdisciplinary appeal in their area of expertise and public recognition.

MSU is located at the intersection of Valley Road and Normal Avenue in Montclair. The campus is one mile south of the junction of routes 3 and 46, 14 miles west of New York City.

More information on the University is available on its Web site at www.montclair.edu.


March 13, 2006