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.

After Germany invaded Poland and occupied the town his family was placed in a labor camp where his father who was familiar with much of the local infrastructure was a valued prisoner. Most of the rest of the family periRoald Hoffmannd in Holocaust though one grandmother and a few others survived. Hoffman visited Zolochiv with his adult son (by then a parent of a five-year-old) in 2006 and found that the attic where he had hidden was still intact but the storeroom had been incorporated ironically enough into a chemistry classroom.

He is the Frank H. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca New York.