Nobel Laureate Visits College Scholars
Nobel Laureate Visits College Scholars
On April 19 and 20, 2013, Roald Hoffmann, Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Chemistry, emeritus, at Cornell University and winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry visited the College Scholars program. On Friday evening there was a dinner reception at the director’s home where many of the scholars were able to talk informally with Dr. Hoffmann. During the evening, he read and discussed some of his poems.
On Saturday afternoon, there was a staged reading of Dr. Hoffmann’s latest play, “Something that Belongs to You,” in the Carousel Theatre. The staged reading was directed by College Scholars alumnus, Dennis E. Perkins (‘89) and featured several of Knoxville’s best actors. The semi-autobiographical play is a story of survival and memory, and of the choices, always there, that human beings must make between good and evil in terrible times. As a small child, Dr. Hoffmann and his mother were hidden in an attic for more than a year to save them from the Holocaust.
Dr. Hoffmann’s visit was sponsored by the College Scholars Program and the East Tennessee Section of the American Chemical Society. It was the first event in what we hope to make an annual series of visits by distinguished interdisciplinary scholars.