I am a teacher, and I am proud of it. At Cornell University I have taught primarily undergraduates, and indeed almost every year since 1966 have taught first-year general chemistry.
I came to a happy Jewish family in dark days in Europe.
I learned English, my sixth language at this point, quite quickly.
My mother remarried, and Paul Hoffmann was a kind and gentle father to me until his death, two months prior to the Nobel Prize announcement.
My research interests are in the electronic structure of stable and unstable molecules, and of transition states in reactions.
One day I discovered that one could get the barrier to internal rotation in ethane approximately right using this method. This was the beginning of my work on organic molecules.
Our part of Poland was under Russian occupation from 1939-1941.
The three ensuing years in the Society (1962 - 65), gave me the time to switch my interests from theory to applied theory, specifically to organic chemistry.
Then in 1941 darkness descended, and the annihilation of Polish Jewry began. We went to a ghetto, then a labor camp.
Boys should not play with weapons more dangerous than they understand.
How prone poor Humanity is to dam up the minutest remnants of its freedom, and build an artificial roof to prevent it looking up to the clear blue sky.
Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?
It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass.
It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction.
Not a single man on earth knows from his own experience the how and where of his birth, only from tradition, which is often very uncertain.
Once you are dancing with the devil, the prettiest capers won't help you.
Think of the wonderful circles in which our whole being moves and from which we cannot escape no matter how we try. The circler circles in these circles... .
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