Kohn, Walter (1923– )

Austrian-born physicist. He escaped the Nazis and emigrated to England in 1939, then Canada in 1940. He took up a post at Harvard University in 1946, where he taught (1948–50), then moved to the Carnegie Mellon Institute (1950–60), where he contributed to the theory of electronic structure of metals. He joined the University of California, San Diego (1960–79), and continued his work on the physics of solids. He directed Santa Barbara's Institute for Theoretical Physics (1979–84), then became a physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (from 1984). He shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1998 with the UK chemist John Pople for work in quantum chemistry.

Kohn was born in Vienna, Austria.