Anna L. Hoffman was born in Covington, KY, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. She received her A.B. and M.A. from the University of Cincinnati, with a major in organic chemistry. She did graduate work at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, and at Ohio State University. She completed all requirements for the Ph.D. at Ohio State except the dissertation, but could not finish because of family problems.
She was assistant professor and head of the Chemistry Department of Tusculum College, Greenville, TN, and professor of chemistry at the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy. She was librarian at Schenley Laboratories, Lawrenceburg, IN, and after her retirement she was technical librarian for the United Public Health Service and instructor in chemistry at Ohio Mechanics Institute, both in Cincinnati, as well as a teacher at Dixie Heights High School in her hometown of Covington. She was a charter member of Radium Chapter of Iota Sigma Pi (ISP), and was also a member of Sigma Delta Epsilon and of Alpha Epsilon Delta. She died on August 28, 1974.
Marie Berg writes: "In 1963 I first met Anna Hoffman at a meeting of ISP in Cleveland where we had been assigned to share a dormitory room. We became fast good friends and often thereafter I visited her in her lovely double house at Fort Mitchell (a suburb of Covington). Her married sister lived in the other half, and they shared a large garden with a gazebo, which was Anna’s pride and joy. She was a vigorous little woman, always ready to help someone or some cause. If she took an assignment she pursued it with fervor. She was a great admirer and helper of Dr. Ralph Oesper, the chemistry historian."
(Thanks to Marie Berg and to Violet Diller of Cincinnati, past president of ISP. First printed in the Winter 1980–1981 Bulletin.)
