LSC Executive Staff

Paul Hoffman, the President and CEO of Liberty Science Center, is the driving force behind SciTech Scity, LSC's partnership with Jersey City to create a 30-acre innovation campus to launch and grow world-changing science and technology start-up companies and reimagine high-school science education. He has helmed LSC since 2011.

As a writer, Hoffman's work explores the relationship between genius, madness, obsession and creativity. He is the author of 11 books, most recently a memoir about the world of championship chess, King’s Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World’s Most Dangerous Game. His previous book, Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight, was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was the basis of a television documentary for Nova. Hoffman’s first biography, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth, was published in 16 languages and won the Rhône-Poulenc prize for best science book of the year.

Hoffman was president and editor in chief of Discover magazine; president and publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica; and the editorial chairman of BigThink.com for which he conducted video interviews with Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Ray Kurzweil, Penn Jillette, Annie Duke, Garry Kasparov, Ed Koch, Jonathan Irving, Gay Talese, Jonathan Ames, and Nobel laureates James Watson and Orhan Pamuk. A noted expert on the public understanding of science, Hoffman has advised NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Hoffman was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College.

He was the color commentator for 17 hours of live chess on ESPN. He has played chess with Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov, Judit Polgár, and Howard Stern, and he was taken into custody in Libya when he tried to play chess with the late Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The proud father of a young furniture designer, Hoffman is co-owner of two Brooklyn restaurants, San Pedro Inn and Rucola. Because of his penchant for long exploratory walks around New York City. The New York Times called him “Mayor of Strange Places." Chicago magazine once called him “the smartest man in the world,” but Hoffman says the editors must have caught him on a particularly good day.