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Chemistry Imagined book cover
Chemistry Imagined
Reflections on Science
1993
First Published
3.83
Average Rating
168
Number of Pages
In Chemistry Imagined, Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, in a unique collaboration with artist Vivian Torrence, reveals the creative and humanistic sparks that drive science in general and chemistry in particular. A series of thirty field-color painted collages paired with short essays, personal commentary, and poems evokes the magic of this usually inaccessible field, its historical roots, the richness of modern chemical activities, and the mysterious confluences of science and art. Showing the general reader how science permeates daily life, Hoffmann stresses the social, cultural, literary, and psychological contexts of chemistry. With delicate, surreal images, Torrence explores the highly visual nature and the intellectual essence of chemistry, the way chemists think, and the way they formulate their questions. Chemistry Imagined discusses chemical discoveries, processes, and personalities in an unusually humanistic manner. Perusing the contents, a reader finds the first drafts of the periodic table of elements likened to revisions of a William Blake poem, the chemical reasons behind the success of Chinese folk medicine, a poem about scanning tunneling microscopy, similarities between molecules and musical instruments, and a meditation on why it is that scientists supposediy "discover" but artists "create." The general public, along with scientists and artists, will find that this celebration of how molecular science fits into world culture is surprising, compelling, and poignantly beautiful. Torrence's provocative images and Hoffmann's perceptions of modern and ancient chemistry shape an illuminating collage of a central science.
Avg Rating
3.83
Number of Ratings
24
5 STARS
25%
4 STARS
38%
3 STARS
33%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
0%
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Author

Roald Hoffmann
Roald Hoffmann
Author · 6 books

Roald Hoffmann (born Roald Safran; July 18, 1937) is an American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus, at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. Hoffmann graduated in 1955 from New York City's Stuyvesant High School, where he won a Westinghouse science scholarship. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree at Columbia University (Columbia College) in 1958. He earned his Master of Arts degree in 1960 from Harvard University. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Harvard University while working under direction of subsequent 1976 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner William Lipscomb. Under Lipscomb's direction the Extended Hückel method was developed by Lawrence Lohr and by Roald Hoffmann. This method was later extended by Hoffmann. He went to Cornell in 1965 and has remained there, becoming professor emeritus. Hoffmann has investigated both organic and inorganic substances, developing computational tools and methods such as the extended Hückel method, which he proposed in 1963. He also developed, with Robert Burns Woodward, rules for elucidating reaction mechanisms (the Woodward–Hoffmann rules). He also introduced the isolobal principle. In 1981, Hoffmann received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Kenichi Fukui "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions". Other awards: Priestley Medal (1990) Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry Organic Chemistry Award (American Chemical Society), 1969 Inorganic Chemistry Award (American Chemical Society), 1982 Pimentel Award in Chemical Education (1996) Award in Pure Chemistry Monsanto Award Literaturpreis of the Verband der Chemischen Industrie for his textbook The Same and Not The Same (1997) National Medal of Science National Academy of Sciences American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow American Philosophical Society Fellow Kolos Medal Foreign Member, Royal Society Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Harvard Centennial Medalist James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry Hoffmann is member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In August 2007, the American Chemical Society held a symposium at its biannual national meeting to honor Hoffmann's 70th birthday. He also has served as a consultant with Eli Lilly and Company, a global pharmaceutical corporation.

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