Paul Hoffman (science writer)

This article is about the American writer and television presenter. For other uses of the name, see Paul Hoffman (disambiguation).

Paul Hoffman
Born	(1956-03-30) March 30, 1956 (age 69)
Alma mater	Harvard University
Notable works	The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
Notable awards	Royal Society Science Books Prize

Paul Hoffman (born March 30, 1956) ^[1] is the president and CEO of the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. ^[2] He is also a prominent author, science educator, food entrepreneur, storyteller, and host of the PBS television series Great Minds of Science.

Career

Hoffman holds a B.A. degree summa cum laude from Harvard, is the winner of the first National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chicago magazine once called him "the smartest man in the world," but Hoffman claims the editors must have caught him on a particularly good day. The New York Times called him "the mayor of strange places" ^[3] because of his penchant for checking in at out-of-the-way places on Foursquare. Hoffman's most celebrated book, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers , is a biography of the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős. It won Royal Society Science Books Prize.

Hoffman was president and editor in chief of Discover . He served as president and publisher of Encyclopædia Britannica before returning full-time to writing and consulting work. He lives in Brooklyn and Woodstock, New York. He has appeared on CBS This Morning and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as a correspondent. He is a paradoxologist under the pseudonym Dr. Crypton. He designed the puzzle in the book Treasure: In Search of the Golden Horse (1984). That year, he designed the treasure map in Romancing the Stone , starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. ^[4] Hoffman is a chess player rated around 1900 (or class-A level) who was the last man standing when world champion Magnus Carlsen played blindfold blitz chess against three challengers. ^[5]

Hoffman was the editorial chairman of the video interview website Big Think, where he personally interviewed Dick Cavett, Richard Dawkins, Annie Duke, Arianna Huffington, John Irving, Penn Jillette, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Ed Koch, among others. He joined the Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, in October 2011.

Hoffman was the creative director of the Beyond Rubik's Cube exhibition, which appeared at venues around the world starting with the LSC, the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, and Telus World of Science in Edmonton, Canada. ^[6] Exhibition elements included a 35-foot-tall rooftop cube made of lights that people could manipulate with their cellphones, a $2.5 million cube made of diamonds, a giant cube displaying the inner workings of the puzzle, and cube-solving robots. ^[7] Google was LSC's creative partner in the creation of the 7,000-square-foot exhibition. ^[8]

Hoffman is spearheading the development of SciTech Scity, a 30-acre innovation campus in Jersey City. ^[9]

Partial bibliography

• Hoffman, Paul (2007). King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game . New York: Hyperion Books. ISBN   978-1-4013-0097-5.
• Hoffman, Paul (2003). Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight . Hyperion Books. ISBN   0-7868-8571-8.
• Hoffman, Paul (1998). The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth. New York: Hyperion Books. ISBN   0-7868-8406-1.
• Hoffman, Paul (1988). Archimedes' Revenge: The Joys and Perils of Mathematics. New York: Fawcett Colombine. ISBN   0-449-00089-3.
• Crypton, Dr. (1985). Timid Virgins Make Dull Company and Other Puzzles, Pitfalls, and Paradoxes. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN   0-14-008043-0.

References

1. "SO WHAT DO YOU DO, PAUL HOFFMAN, AUTHOR, ASME-WINNING WRITER". Mediabistro. August 22, 2007. Archived from the original on June 3, 2013. Retrieved January 4, 2015.
2. "Paul Hoffman Named President and CEO". Liberty Science Center Web site. Liberty Science Center. Archived from the original on October 8, 2011. Retrieved October 19, 2011.
3. Leland, John (November 30, 2012). "Paul Hoffman, Mayor of Strange Places and Explorer of the City". The New York Times .
4. "Paul Hoffman (Author of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers)".
5. Barron, James (November 11, 2015). "An American Chess Master, Age 23, Awaits His Turn on a Bigger Stage". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved January 6, 2023.
6. Shaffrey, Ted (April 27, 2012). "Cubism? Rubik helps with toy's anniversary exhibit". New York. Associated Press.
7. Quenqua, Douglas (August 6, 2012). "Rubik's Cube Twists Back Into Limelight". The New York Times . New York.
8. "Liberty Science Center". Archived from the original on June 20, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
9. Bergeron, Tom (October 22, 2021). "SciTech Scity, Game-Changing Innovation Campus, to Break Ground Today". ROI-NJ. Jersey City.

External links

• Paul Hoffman's bio
• Paul Hoffman's blog
• Presenting at Cusp Conference 2009 (video)