The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards annually to scientists and scholars from abroad with internationally recognized academic qualifications. The research award honours the academic achievements of the award winner's lifetime. Furthermore, award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in Germany in cooperation with colleagues for periods of between six months and one year.

Born in Bremerton, Washington, he was the son of the late Frank and Emma Spriegel Strobel. A graduate of Washington State College (now University), with a B.S. in chemistry and highest honors, Strobel worked on the Manhattan Project at Brown University in the group headed by Professor Charles Kraus from July 1943 to the end of World War II. With the end of the war, he continued the physical chemistry project that he had started in Brown in the Fall 1942 to receive a Ph.D. in 1947. He stayed on at Brown for a one year post-doctoral position before accepting a position in the Fall of 1948 at Duke University as an Instructor in Chemistry.

During his early years at Duke, he became a full-fledged analytical chemist and came to realize that achieving a mastery of all kinds of measurements on substances and accompanying theory of behavior might be achieved more completely by taking a sophisticated approach to the instrumentation involved. The product of those insights, and a great deal of study, was the first edition of the book, "Chemical Instrumentation, A Systematic Approach to Instrumental Analysis," which was published by Addison-Wesley. A second edition appeared in 1973 and a third, with Dr. William H. Heineman as a co-author, was published by Wiley-Interscience in 1989. His book has been translated into several languages.

Strobel's professional career at Duke was split between chemistry and academic administration. His administrative work began when he accepted a half-time appointment as an academic Dean in Duke's undergraduate men's college in the fall of 1956, beginning a range of activities that over the years accounted for more than one-third of his time. He was assistant dean from 1956 to 64 and again during 1972-82. He was associate dean in 1964-66. He was also acting associate dean and acting assistant provost in 1974-75. Strobel retired in 1990. Altogether the combination of teaching, writing, administrative work, sabbaticals abroad, and directive research for many masters and doctoral students defined Strobel's rewarding academic career that spanned 47 years at Duke University.

In 2001, more than a decade after his retirement, he received the J. Calvin Giddings Award for Excellence in Education for writing Chemical Instrumentation, a book that enhanced the personal and professional development of students in the study of analytical chemistry.

In his personal life, Strobel was a member of Watts Street Baptist Church where he served as a Deacon and Sunday school teacher. In addition to education, Strobel loved hiking, travel, gardening and photography.

In 2002, he was preceded in death by his wife of 49 years, Shirley Holcomb Strobel. Surviving are two sons, Gary Dent Strobel and wife, Sarah, of Mooresville, N.C., and Paul A. Strobel, of Durham, NC; one daughter, Lynn S. Helgeson and husband Steve, of Roanoke, Va.; and two grandchildren, Zack and Scott Helgeson.

Sources

Division of Analytical Chemistry. 2001. Congratulations to this year's DAC award winners!. Available on-line at http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/ContentMgmtService/resources/ACS/Subportals/analytical/newsletters/awardees.html#. Accessed 7/7/05.

Duke University News and Communications. June 7, 2005. Emeritus Chemistry Professor Howard A. Strobel Dies. Available on-line at http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/06/strobelobit_print.htm. Accessed 7/7/05.

The Herald-Sun, Obituaries Section, June 07, 2005, Page C2, available on-line at http://www.heraldsun.com/archives/URNDetail.cfm?URN=0486381938&QSearchInfo=Howard%20Strobel. Accessed 7/7/05.

Among Dr. Hoffmann’s other distinctions are the Arthur C. Cope Award of the American Chemical Society, the National Medal of Science, the National Academy of Sciences Award in the Chemical Sciences, and the Priestly Medal. Dr. Hoffmann’s creativity extends beyond chemistry. He helped spearhead the project Chemistry Imagined, an unusual collaboration in the realms of art, science, and literature, which attempts to reveal the imaginative basis of molecular science. His book The Same and Not the Same explores the dualities that lie under the surface of chemistry. Old Wine, New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition, which he co-authored, offers insights from the intertwined voices of science and religion. And his play Oxygen, co-written with Carl Djerasssi, Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, explores the discovery of oxygen, along with deeper issues concerning the conduct of, and the motivations behind, science.

Throughout the years, Dr. Hoffmann has maintained an interest in literature, particularly German and Russian works. He began to write poetry in the mid 1970s; his first poem was published in 1984, and the first volume of his collected poems appeared three years later. Since then, his poems have appeared in many magazines, have been collected in several volumes, and have been translated into several languages. “One thing is certainly not true: that scientists have some greater insight into the workings of nature than poets,” he has written. “Interestingly, I find that many humanists deep down feel that scientists have such inner knowledge that is barred to them. Perhaps we scientists do, but in such carefully circumscribed pieces of the universe! Poetry soars…through a world we reveal and make.”

His interest in popularizing science has taken him to television, where he presented a course in the broadcast The World of Chemistry. The series of twenty-six half-hour episodes aired on PBS stations and abroad.

“Roald Hoffmann has taught the chemical community new and useful ways to look at the geometry and reactivity of molecules, from organic, through inorganic, to infinitely extended structures,” said Cornell’s chemistry-department chair, after Dr. Hoffmann was included among the top seventy-five chemists of the past seventy-five years in a special issue of Chemical & Engineering News. “But as important, his teaching is not confined to his journals, nor even to the freshman introductory chemistry courses that he teaches each year…. Roald is not merely one of the most important chemists in the past seventy-five years, he is one of the most important educators.”