Green Family Lecture Series: “Electronic Structure of Matter: Wave Functions and Density Functionals” by Walter Kohn

May 30, 2012

The Speaker

Originally from Austria, Walter Kohn studied Mathematics and Physics at thewkohn University of Toronto. He then completed his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 1948, followed by postdoctoral work at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Originally from Austria, Walter Kohn studied Mathematics and Physics at the University of Toronto. He then completed his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 1948, followed by postdoctoral work at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.

Kohn has made major contributions to the physics of semiconductors, superconductivity, surface physics and catalysis. He was the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, which is one of the leading research centers in physics. He has received numerous awards including the Niels Bohr/Unesco Gold Medal, the United States National Medal of Science and the Richard Prange Prize. His role in creating Density Functional Theory, the most widely used theory of the electronic structure of matter, earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. In recent years, he was an active member of the U.S. government’s Basic Energy Science Advisory Committee and a consultant with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In 2005 he produced a documentary on solar power entitled “The Power of the Sun.” Kohn currently works on Macular Degeneration, renewable energies and global warming.