Walter Kohn, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Walter Kohn

American physicist

Date of Birth: 09-Mar-1923

Place of Birth: Vienna, Austria

Date of Death: 19-Apr-2016

Profession: physicist, chemist, university teacher

Nationality: Canada, United States, Austria

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Walter Kohn (German pronunciation: ['valt? 'ko?n]; March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016) was an 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.