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Walter Kohn

Walter Kohn (March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist. He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1998. The award recognized their contributions to the understandings of the electronic properties of materials. In particular, Kohn played the leading role in the development of density functional theory, which made it possible to calculate quantum mechanical electronic structure by equations involving the electronic density (rather than the many-body wavefunction). This computational simplification led to more accurate calculations on complex systems as well as many new insights, and it has become an essential tool for materials science, condensed-phase physics, and the chemical physics of atoms and molecules.

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My father, who had lost a brother, fighting on the Austrian side in World War I, was a committed pac ...

My father, who had lost a brother, fighting on the Austrian side in World War I, was a committed pac ...

Originally I had planned to revert to nuclear physics there, in particular the structure of the deut ...

In particular, I established a reasonably accurate energy threshold for permanent displacement of a ...

In particular, I established a reasonably accurate energy threshold for permanent displacement of a ...

During one or two summers, as well as part-time during the school year, I worked for a small Canadia ...

My project was radiation damage of Si and Ge by energetic electrons, critical for the use of the rec ...

On another level, I want to mention that I have a strong Jewish identity and - over the years - have ...

I was born in 1923 into a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, a few years after the end of World W ...

I have just joined the Board of the Population Institute because I am convinced that early stabiliza ...

However, while the Nazi barbarians and their collaborators threatened the entire world, I could not ...

I was fortunate to find an extraordinary mathematics and applied mathematics program in Toronto.

My commitment to a humane and peaceful world continues to this day.

I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of ...