Walter Kohn
Contributors: Matthias Scheffler (Editor); Peter Weinberger (Editor)
Edition: 1st ed. 2003. 2nd printing edition
Publisher: Springer
Published: April 30, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 309
ISBN-13: 9783540208099
Subjects: Biography: general; Popular science; Science; Biography / Autobiography; Science/Mathematics; Chemistry - Physical & Theoretical; General; Science / Physics; PHYSICS
First sentence: Walter was one of an exciting generation of students who showed up at Harvard right after the war, having all kinds of interesting backgrounds Los Alamos and other wartime labs, the military, refugees like Walter, mixed in with very young recent undergraduates For good reason, he took his studies very seriously, and he may have thought of me as rather light-weight in any case, we were not much more than acquainted, and went our separate ways, he to a postdoc in Europe and I to Bell Labs, having now become serious, since I had acquired a family to support.
Description: This is not a science book, nor even a book about science, although most of the contributors are scientists. It is a book of personal stories about Walter Kohn, a theoretical physicist and winner of half of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Walter Kohn originated and/or refined a number of very important theoretical approaches and concepts in solid-state physics. He is known in particular for Density-Functional Theory. This book represents a kind of "oral history" about him, gathered - in anticipation of his 80th birthday - from former students, collaborators, fellow-scientists, and friends.