Kohn, Walter

Kohn, Walter

▪ American physicist
born March 9, 1923, Vienna, Austria

      Austrian-born American physicist who, with John A. Pople (Pople, Sir John A.), received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The award recognized their individual work on computations in quantum chemistry. Kohn's share of the prize acknowledged his development of the density-functional theory, which made it possible to apply the complicated mathematics of quantum mechanics to the description and analysis of the chemical bonding between atoms.

      Having emigrated from his native Austria, Kohn received a master's degree from the University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada) in 1946. He earned a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1948 and taught there in 1948–50. He became a professor of physics at the Carnegie-Mellon Institute (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in 1950, and he held professorships at the University of California at San Diego (1960–79) and the University of California at Santa Barbara (1979–91), becoming emeritus in 1991.

      Kohn's work centred on the use of quantum mechanics to understand electron bonding between atoms to form molecules. Since its development in the 1920s, quantum mechanics had proven a powerful tool for understanding the interactions of atomic particles with each other and with radiation. Quantum mechanics predicts probabilities in matter (wave functions (wave function)); however, the mathematical calculations necessary to describe the probability states for electrons in an atomic or molecular system were far too complex to be useful to scientists. In the 1960s, however, Kohn discovered that the total energy of an atomic or molecular system described by quantum mechanics could be calculated if the spatial distribution (density) of all electrons within that system were known. It was not necessary, then, to describe the probable motions for each individual electron within such a system but merely to know the average electron density located at each point within a system. As developed by other researchers, Kohn's approach, the density-functional theory, greatly simplified the computations needed to understand the electron bonding between atoms within molecules. The method's simplicity enables researchers to map the geometrical structure of even very large molecules and to predict complex enzymatic and other chemical reactions.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • KOHN, WALTER — (1923– ), U.S. physicist and Nobel laureate. Kohn was born in Vienna where he attended the Akademische Gymnasium. He moved to the Jewish Chajes Gymnasium where he received exceptional teaching in mathematics from Dr. Victor Sabbath and in physics …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Kohn , Walter — (1923–) Austrian–American theoretical chemist Kohn was born in Vienna. From 1950 to 1960, he was professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, USA. He then joined the University of California in San Diego, remaining there until …   Scientists

  • Kohn — Walter …   Scientists

  • Walter Kohn — en 2006 Naissance 19 mars 1923 Vienne (Autriche) Nationalité …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Kohn — Kohn,   Walter, amerikanischer Chemiker österreichischer Herkunft, * Wien 9. 3. 1923; 1950 60 Professor in Pittsburgh, danach bis 1979 in San Diego, 1979 84 Direktor des Instituts für theoretische Physik in Santa Barbara. Kohn erhielt für seine… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Kohn-Sham-Gleichung — Die Dichtefunktionaltheorie (DFT) ist ein Verfahren zur Bestimmung des quantenmechanischen Grundzustandes eines Vielelektronensystems, das auf der (ortsabhängigen) Dichte der Elektronen beruht. Die Dichtefunktionaltheorie wird zur Berechnung… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Walter Kohn — bei einer Gastvorlesung an der Universität Graz im April 2006 …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Walter Kohn — Walter Kohn. Un cartel en un poste eléctr …   Wikipedia Español

  • Kohn — ist ein jüdischer Nachname und der Familienname folgender Personen: Alfred Kohn (1867–1959), tschechischer Medizinwissenschaftler Alfred Kohn, Pseudonym Karl Alfredy (1877– nach 1935), deutscher Kapellmeister und Komponist Angela Kohn, bekannt… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Kohn — is a surname, which may refer to: People * Alfie Kohn, American lecturer and author * Dan Kohn Sherbock, Jewish theologian * David Kohn, Russian archaeologist * Donald Kohn, economist * Fritz Nathan Kohn, later Kortner, Austrian born stage and… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”