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Walter Kohn

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Walter Kohn

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American physicist (1923–2016)

AI overview

Walter Kohn was an American physicist who lived from 1923 to 2016 and made significant contributions to the field of physics. His work has had important applications in science and technology, though the specific details of his achievements would require additional context to fully explain.

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Person · Open Library

Born
1923
Works
6

Top works

  • Walter Kohn
  • Perspectives on the crisis of UNESCO
  • Walter Kohn
  • Collisions of light nuclei
  • Collisions of light nuclei

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Group
Origin
Czechia
Active from
2014

Discography

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Quotes

  • Paris somehow lends itself to conceptual new ideas. I don't know why it is. There is a certain magic to that city.

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Wikidata facts

Image
WalterKohnGraz21042006 1.jpg
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Commons category
Walter Kohn
date of birth
1923-03-09
Erdős number
3
date of death
2016-04-19
P8168
Q228898
Sources (6)

via Wikidata · CC0

~8 min read

Article

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) was an Austrian-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 understanding 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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