Roald Hoffmann was born Roald Safran on July 18, 1937, in Zloczów, Poland on the eve of World War II. His father was Hillel Safran, a civil engineer; his mother, Clara Rosen, was a schoolteacher. In 1941 German troops occupied Zloczów, and the family was sent first to a Jewish ghetto and then interred at a labor camp. Safran managed to arrange for his wife and son to escape the camp, and the two were hidden by a Ukrainian teacher. Hoffmann's father made plans to follow them, but his escape was discovered by the Nazis and he was executed. Hoffmann and his mother were able to remain undetected until 1944, when the Red Army liberated Zloczów, which later became part of Soviet Ukraine. The two moved to Kraków, Poland, where his mother met and married Paul Hoffmann, whose spouse had also been killed in...