Grant Will Bring Nobel Laureate to Holy Cross, Create Chemistry Research Fellowships

Richard Herrick, professor of chemistry at the College of the Holy Cross, has received a Jean Dreyfus Boissevain Lectureship in the Chemical Sciences for Undergraduate Institutions grant in the amount of $18,500 from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.

The award will allow the chemistry department to bring to campus Roald Hoffmann, a theoretical chemist at Cornell University who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  Noted for his ability to break down complicated scientific processes to a general audience, Hoffman will give a public talk on April 6 at Holy Cross, as well as a series of technical lectures for faculty and science students on April 7.  Also an accomplished poet and playwright, Hoffman will give a reading of his poem “Jerry-Built Forever,” which is about hemoglobin, while visiting Holy Cross.

The Jean Dreyfus Boissevain grant also provides stipends and support for two summer research students to work in a chemistry lab this summer.  Participants in the summer research program receive a $4,200 stipend, free on-campus housing, as well as money for research supplies. Undergraduate students are essential to successful completion of faculty research projects at Holy Cross, and they are trained to be full partners in the research process. In the last five years, students co-authored more than 40 research papers with faculty.

Holy Cross was one of only four recipients of the Jean Dreyfus Boissevain award this year.  The other winners were Bucknell University, Western Washington University and the Joint Science Department of Claremont McKenna, Pitzer and Scripps Colleges.