Sponsors

Walter Kohn is a Nobel laureate in Chemistry and Professor of Physics, Emeritus and Research Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior positions include director of the UCSB Institute Theoretical Physics, chairman and professor of the UC San Diego Department of Physics, Professor in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and instructor in the Harvard Department of Physics. Kohn is a condensed matter theorist who has made seminal contributions to the understanding of the electronic structure of materials. He played the leading role in the development of the density functional theory, revolutionizing scientists′ approach to the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solid materials in physics, chemistry and materials science. Kohn has also made major contributions to the physics of semiconductors, superconductivity, surface physics and catalysis. He was the founding director of the National Science Foundation′s Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB, now a leading research center in physics. He is the author of two hundred professional articles and sits on the review committees of a number of academic institutions and national laboratories. He is the recipient of many honors and awards including the National Medal of Science, Niels Bohr/UNESCO Gold Medal and the Nobel Prize. Kohn earned his master′s in applied mathematics at the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard University.