On-campus symposium in honor of Roald Hoffmann will be July 19-20

Scientists, humanists, poets and painters will gather at Cornell on Saturday and Sunday, July 19 and 20, at a symposium in honor of the 60th birthday of Cornell chemist Roald Hoffmann.

Hoffmann, the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and professor of chemistry, poet and author, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1981.

Here is the symposium schedule:

Saturday, July 19

Baker Laboratory of Chemistry, Room 200, Second Floor

• 8:45 a.m.: Paul Houston, chairman, chemistry department, Cornell -- Welcome and opening remarks
• 9 a.m.: Lionel Salem, director, Center for Popularization of Knowledge, University of Paris -- "Popularization of Knowledge: Another Access to Culture"
• 9:45 a.m.: Malcolm Chisholm, professor of chemistry, Indiana University -- "Two and Two Makes Four in More Ways Than One"
• 11 a.m.: Cynthia Friend, professor of chemistry, Harvard University -- "A Chemist's View of Surfaces: Bridging the Cultures of Solid State Physics and Molecular Chemistry"
• 1:30 p.m.: Vivian Torrence, illustrator, Munich, Germany -- "Celebrating Solutions"
• 2 p.m.: Peter Edwards, professor of chemistry, Birmingham University -- "How Chemistry and Physics Meet in the Metallic State"
• 2:45 p.m.: Jerome Berson, professor of chemistry, Yale University -- "What Is This Thing Called Spin? This Funny Thing Called Spin"

  Barnes Hall Auditorium

• 4 p.m.: Archie Ammons, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry, Cornell -- "Mechanism"
• 4:30 p.m.: A Musical Offering: Selections by J.S. Bach, Jane Wilkinson/Roald Hoffmann, et al., performed by Graeme Bailey, Steven Ewer, Charlotte Greenspan and Jerrold Meinwald
• 5:15 p.m.: Phyllis Janowitz, professor of English, Cornell -- "The Temple of Zeus"

  Sunday, July 20

  Clark Hall, Room 700

• 10:45 a.m.: Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, Netanya, Israel -- "The Advantages of Ignorance"
• 11:15 a.m.: Poster session