From Molecules and a Nobel Prize … to Poetry

He survived a Nazi labour camp, stumbled into chemistry and won a Nobel Prize. Then Roald Hoffmann returned to his first love: literature.

Roald Hoffmann may have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but it’s art that really drives him

FOR A HANDFUL of the world’s best scientists — those suffering from nobelomania– October can be a tense month. That’s when, annually and over a three-day period, a small number are named as the exalted masters of their discipline — winners of the three science Nobel Prizes. First, Physics is announced, then Chemistry, and lastly, Physiology or Medicine.

Nobels carry mystique and global acclaim, and people the world over await the announcements with anticipation. But some do so with dread, for they are obsessed by the idea that they are eminently worthy but are, again and again, overlooked.

It’s a peculiar condition that Roald Hoffmann, an emeritus professor at Cornell University, has seen more times than he’d care to admit.

“They listen carefully on that day, and some of them call friends and say ‘Another year has passed and they made a mistake’. Most of them don’t dare talk to anyone, but it just breeds internally, and you can see it. They start campaigns, some of them. It’s terrible.”