Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Złoczów, then Poland, now Ukraine. Having survived the war, he came to the US in 1949, and taught and carried out research for many years at Cornell University. In chemistry, his colleagues have learned from him how to think about electrons guiding structure and reactivity of molecules and extended solids. He has gained most of the honours of his profession, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hoffmann is also a writer of poetry, essays, non-fiction, and plays, and has carved out his own territory between poetry, philosophy, and science. He has published six volumes of poetry, two of which are bilingual editions in Spanish and Russian, published in Madrid and Moscow.