Walter Kohn

Walter Kohn (March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist and chemist best known for developing density functional theory (DFT), a computational framework that revolutionized the study of electronic structures in molecules and solids. Born in Vienna to a middle-class Jewish family, Kohn escaped Nazi persecution as a teenager via the Kindertransport to England and was later interned in Canada during World War II before pursuing higher education there and in the United States.

Kohn earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1945 and 1946, respectively, followed by a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1948 under Julian Schwinger. His career included professorships at Carnegie Institute of Technology (1950–1960), the University of California, San Diego (1960–1979), and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) from 1979 onward, where he served as founding director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics).

Walter Kohn was born Walter Samuel Gerst Kohn on March 9, 1923, in Vienna, Austria, to parents Salomon and Gittel Kohn. His family was middle-class and Jewish, residing in the city amid the economic hardships following World War I, which had severely impacted Austria and Vienna in particular. The Kohns maintained a family business involved in commissioning and publishing, reflecting a stable professional background for the era.

Kohn had one sibling, a sister named Minna. His parents originated from the eastern regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which shaped their assimilated Jewish identity within Vienna's cultural milieu. As a young boy, Kohn displayed greater interest in classical languages such as Latin and Greek rather than scientific pursuits, indicative of a traditional education emphasizing humanities in his household.

His early childhood was described as pleasant and sheltered, benefiting from the relative stability of interwar Vienna for Jewish families of their standing, until the political upheavals of 1938. This period allowed for a formative environment focused on intellectual development within a cohesive family unit, though broader antisemitic undercurrents in Austrian society loomed in the background.