Robert Hanson is a Professor of Chemistry at St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota, where he has been teaching since 1986. Trained as an organic chemist with Gilbert Stork at Columbia University, he shares a patent with 2001 Nobel Prize winner K.Barry Sharpless for the asymmetric epoxidation of allylic alcohols. His interest in thermodynamics goes back to early training at the California Institute of Technology, from which he got a B.S. degree in 1979. He spends his occasional moments of free time playing the violin in a community orchestra, piloting gliders, and designing new Sudoku strategies.