Roald Hoffmann Quotes

• Knowing without seeing is at the heart of chemistry.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Heart, Knowing, Chemistry

  56 Copy quote

• A few atoms added here, subtracted there, is all it takes to make the difference between male and female sex characteristics, between a harmless molecule and a deadly addictive one.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Sex, Differences, Males

  15 Copy quote

• Not every collision, not every punctilious trajectory by which billiard-ball complexes arrive at their calculable meeting places lead to reaction. ... Men (and women) are not as different from molecules as they think.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Men, Thinking, Molecules

  14 Copy quote

• From a chemist's point of view, the surface or interior of a star…is boring—there are no molecules there.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Stars, Views, Molecules

  12 Copy quote

• Alan Rocke's Image and Reality does so many things vividly and convincingly: it shows how visual images led chemistry step by step to the reality of the microscopic world; how simple portrayals of the logic of substitution and combination were reified; brings to our attention the imaginative, neglected work of Williamson and Kopp; and takes a critical look at Kekule's daydream. And it beautifully delineates the essential place the imagination has in science. A rewarding, lively picture of chemistry in formation.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Simple, Reality, Imagination

  12 Copy quote

• I learned English, my sixth language at this point, quite quickly.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Language

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Teacher, Years, Proud

  8 Copy quote

• I came to a happy Jewish family in dark days in Europe.

  Roald Hoffmann

  Dark, Dark Days, Europe

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• 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.

  Roald Hoffmann

  One Day, Molecules, Rotation

  9 Copy quote

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