12 Facts About Walter Kohn

Walter Kohn was an Austrian-American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist.

Walter Kohn was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998.

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.

Walter Kohn arrived in England as part of the Kindertransport rescue operation immediately after the annexation of Austria by Hitler.

Walter Kohn was at first held in detention in a camp near Sherbrooke, Quebec.

Walter Kohn moved from Harvard to Carnegie Mellon University from 1950 to 1960, after a short stint in Copenhagen as a National Research Council of Canada post-doctoral fellow.

Walter Kohn then accepted the Founding Director's position at the new Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara.

Walter Kohn took his position as a professor in the Physics Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1984; where he worked until the end of his life.

Walter Kohn was awarded the Feenburg medal for his contributions to the many-body problem.

In 1963 Walter 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.

Walter Kohn was a Member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.

Walter Kohn died on April 19,2016, at his home in Santa Barbara, California from jaw cancer, at the age of 93.