22 July Video Lecture: Nobel laureate gives a gift to Ukrainian children

Nobel Laureate Prof. Roald Hoffmann is celebrating his 85th birthday this week by giving a gift to Ukrainian schoolchildren.

The famous Jewish scientist from Cornell University in the United States was saved during the Holocaust, along with his mother and two brothers, by the efforts of the family of a Ukrainian teacher from the village of Univ in the Lviv region.

In March 2022, Hoffman initiated an open letter of well-over two hundred (!) Nobel laureates against Russian aggression, which was published globally in leading newspapers.

Once in an interview, Roald told me that he still remembers how, as a child, he looked at a street in Univ through a crack in the window (pictured) with envy at the smiling children who freely went to school to learn. For a year-and-a-half, he was locked under the ceiling of the house of village teacher Mykola Duke, who later received the title of Righteous Among the Nations for helping save Prof. Hoffman and his family.

Roald Hoffmann understands that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children cannot normally study due to the constant threat of missile attacks by Putin's army. Therefore, the Nobel laureate will give a video lecture on chemical reactions on 22 July 2022 (17:00 Kyiv time) within the framework of the National center "Small Academy of Sciences of Ukraine" platform to support gifted Ukrainian children.

The link to the live broadcast is available here.

This is an example of how the good done by a Ukrainian family to a persecuted Jewish family is returned 80 years later to an entire generation of Ukrainian children victimized by Putin's version of Nazism.

Text: Shimon Briman (Israel)
Photo: Courtesy of Roald Hoffmann from his archive.