One Play and Two Lectures by Roald Hoffmann
Events:
• Should've
• Telling Stories in Science: Honesty, Imagination and Ethics
• All the Ways to Have a Bond*
* chemistry lecture, part of the Hoffmann Event, but not sponsored by the AC.
Program
Click here to download the program for all three Hoffmann events.
Roald Hoffmann was born in Poland in 1937. Since 1965 he has been a professor at Cornell University. He has received many of the honors of his profession, including the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry. As a writer, Hoffmann has carved out a land between science, poetry, and philosophy through many essays and books. Should've had its initial workshop production in Edmonton, Canada in 2006.
Berne's English-language theatre group Upstage in conjunction with the University of Berne Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Arts Council of the English Department proudly presents a reading of
Should've
by Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann.
A play about the social responsibility of scientists and artists, Should've is also about three people trying to resist the transforming power of death. They are unable to do so, sundered as they are by memories and a past that emerges from that death. Eventually the consequences shape a different bond among the three. A fast-paced, evocative portrayal of modern moral and ethical issues.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007, 19.30, Kuppelraum, top floor of main University building Hochschulstrasse 4, Berne.
Entrance free, collection at the door
Telling Stories in Science: Honesty, Imagination and Ethics
Koreferat: Prof. Gerd Grasshoff, University of Bern
Apéro after the lecture (Mediziner-Mensa) sponsored by the Alumni of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Abstract: The question I eventually want to address in this lecture is whether any ethics comes out naturally from science. I'll begin by looking at storytelling in science, more important for doing good science than usually 'fessed up to. The moral implications of any narrative will take me to another place, to consider what lessons if any, might emerge from normative science. The very qualified and constrained "yes" that will emerge will come out not from fear and reproducibility, but from the implicit inner ethical dialogue in reporting and citing, from telling first time narratives, and from the bond of honesty of poets and scientists to the objects they study so intensively.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007, 16.30, Gemeinschaftshörsaal, Gertrud-Woker-Strasse 5, 3012 Bern.
All the Ways to Have a Bond
Abstract: Any rigorous definition of a chemical bond is bound to be impoverishing, leaving one with the comfortable feeling "yes (no), I have (do not have) a bond," but little else. And yet the concept of a chemical bond, so essential to chemistry, and with a venerable history, has life, generating controversy and incredible interest. Even if we can't reduce it to physics. I will discuss some of the common criteria: length, energy, force constants, magnetism, energy splittings and other spectroscopic criteria, bond orders, population analyses, and bond critical points. My advice is likely to be: Push the concept to its limits, accept that (at the limits) a bond will be a bond by some criteria, maybe not others, respect chemical tradition, have fun with the richness of something that cannot be defined clearly, and spare us the hype.
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 11.15, Hörsaal 481, Departement für Chemie und Biochemie, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern.