Walter Kohn

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Walter Kohn
UC San Diego
Doctoral advisorJulian Schwinger
Signature
A banner on a lightpole at the University of California, Santa Barbara, commemorating Walter Kohn being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998.

Walter Kohn (German pronunciation: [ˈvaltɐ ˈkoːn]; March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016)[3] was an Austrian-American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist. He was awarded, with

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.[5]

Early years in Canada

Kohn arrived in

Because he was an Austrian national, he was transferred to Canada in July 1940 after the outbreak of World War II. As a 17-year-old, Kohn traveled as part of a British convoy moving through U-boat-infested waters to Quebec City in Canada; and from there, by train, to a camp in Trois-Rivières. He was at first held in detention in a camp near Sherbrooke, Quebec. This camp, as well as others, provided a small number of educational facilities that Kohn used to the fullest, and he finally succeeded in entering the University of Toronto. As a German national, the future Nobel Laureate in Chemistry was not allowed to enter the chemistry building, and so he opted for physics and mathematics.[7]

Scientific career

Kohn received a war-time bachelor's degree in applied mathematics at the end of his one-year army service, having completed only 2½ out of the 4-year undergraduate program, from the University of Toronto in 1945; he was awarded an M.A. degree in applied mathematics by Toronto in 1946. Kohn was awarded a Ph.D. degree in physics by Harvard University in 1948, where he worked under Julian Schwinger on the three-body scattering problem. At Harvard he also fell under the influence of J. H. Van Vleck and developed an interest in solid state physics.

He moved from Harvard to

University of California at Santa Barbara
in 1984; where he worked until the end of his life.

Kohn made significant contributions to semiconductor physics, which led to his award of the

Oliver E. Buckley Prize by the American Physical Society. He was also awarded the Feenburg medal for his contributions to the many-body problem
. His work on density functional theory was initiated during a visit to the , and was prompted by a consideration of alloy theory. The
Hohenberg–Kohn theorem was further developed, in collaboration with Lu Jeu Sham, to produce the Kohn-Sham equations. The latter is the standard work horse of modern materials science,[12] and even used in quantum theories of plasmas.[12]
In 2004, a study of all citations to the Physical Review  journals from 1893 until 2003, found Kohn to be an author of five of the 100 papers with the "highest citation impact", including the first two.[13]

The University of Oxford

In 1957, he relinquished his Canadian citizenship and became a

naturalized citizen of the United States
.

In 1963 Kohn became a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1969, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1994.[14][15][16] In 2011, he became an honorary member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). He was also a Member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.

Death

Kohn died on April 19, 2016, at his home in Santa Barbara, California from jaw cancer, at the age of 93.[17][18][5]

Honors and awards

Selected publications

  • W. Kohn, "An essay on condensed matter physics in the twentieth century," Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. S59–S77, Centenary 1999. APS
  • W. Kohn, "Nobel Lecture: Electronic structure of matter — wave functions and density functionals," Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 71, No. 5, pp. 1253–1266 (1999). APS
  • D. Jérome, T.M. Rice, and W. Kohn, "Excitonic Insulator," Physical Review, Vol. 158, No. 2, pp. 462–475 (1967). APS
  • P. Hohenberg, and W. Kohn, "Inhomogeneous Electron Gas," Physical Review, Vol. 136, No. 3B, pp. B864–B871 (1964). APS
  • W. Kohn, and L. J. Sham, "Self-Consistent Equations Including Exchange and Correlation Effects," Physical Review, Vol. 140, No. 4A, pp. A1133–A1138 (1965). APS
  • W. Kohn, and J. M. Luttinger, "New Mechanism for Superconductivity," Physical Review Letters, Vol. 15, No. 12, pp. 524–526 (1965). APS
  • W. Kohn, "Theory of the Insulating State," Physical Review, Vol. 133, No. 1A, pp. A171–A181 (1964). APS
  • W. Kohn, "Cyclotron Resonance and de Haas-van Alphen Oscillations of an Interacting Electron Gas," Physical Review, Vol. 123, pp. 1242–1244 (1961). APS

See also

References

  1. ^ Emma Stoye (April 22, 2016). "Chemistry Nobel laureate Walter Kohn dies aged 93 | Chemistry World". Rsc.org.
  2. ^ Newhouse, Alana (April 1, 2010). "A Closer Reading of Roman Vishniac". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 23, 2015.
  3. ^ "Memos | Office of the Chancellor". University of California, Santa Barbara. Archived from the original on May 13, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
  4. ^ From Exile to Excellence Archived May 31, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, by Karin Hanta (Austria Culture Vol. 9 No. January 1/February 1999)
  5. ^
    PMID 27251269
    .
  6. ^ "Walter Kohn, onetime refugee who became Nobel laureate in chemistry, dies at 93". Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 31, 2016. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
  7. ^ a b "Walter Kohn – Biographical". Nobel Prize Organization. Archived from the original on June 13, 2017.
  8. ^ Tegmark, Max (February 19, 2013). "Top Scientists On God: Who Believes, Who Doesn't". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on February 26, 2013. Retrieved May 13, 2013. I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influenced in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery.
  9. ^ UCSB Physics Department Website Archived June 19, 2010, at the Wayback Machine 'W. Kohn, BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS'
  10. ^ "Chanchal Kumar Majumdar (1938–2000) – An obituary" (PDF). Current Science. July 2000. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 17, 2006.
  11. .
  12. ^ a b E. K. U. Gross and R. M. Dreizler, Density Functional Theory, Plenum 1993
  13. .
  14. ^ "Walter Kohn". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
  15. ^ "Walter Kohn". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
  16. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
  17. ^ Pernett, Stephanie (April 22, 2016). "UCSB Professor and Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn Passes Away at 93". Daily Nexus. Santa Barbara, California. Archived from the original on April 23, 2016. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
  18. New York Times.com. April 25, 2016. Archived
    from the original on April 30, 2016. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
  19. ^ "Fellows of the Royal Society". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on March 16, 2015.
  20. ^ "Fellowship of the Royal Society 1660–2015". Royal Society. Archived from the original on October 15, 2015.
  21. ISSN 0080-4606
    .
  22. ^ "Reply to a parliamentary question" (PDF) (in German). p. 1305. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 22, 2012. Retrieved November 19, 2012.
  23. ^ "Reply to a parliamentary question" (PDF) (in German). p. 1874. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 22, 2012. Retrieved November 19, 2012.
  24. ^ "Eight receive honorary degrees". May 24, 2012. Archived from the original on June 29, 2012. Retrieved July 6, 2012.

External links

Further reading