Contact: Larry Bernard
Office: (607) 255-3651
E-Mail: lb12@cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Walter Kohn, professor of physics emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara and winner of the National Medal of Science, will be the Hans A. Bethe Lecturer at Cornell University.
Kohn will give a free, public lecture, "Shifting Viewpoints in Condensed Matter Physics, 1950-1995," on Wednesday, Oct. 2, at 8 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall.
While on campus, Kohn also will deliver these talks:
-- A physics colloquium, "Density Functional Theory of Electronic Structure in Physics and Chemistry," Monday, Sept. 30, at 4:30 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium.
-- A condensed matter theory seminar, "Edge Electronic Structure, The Airy Gas," on Thursday, Oct. 10, at 1:15 p.m. in 701 Clark Hall.
Kohn, a UCSB faculty member since 1979, is a theoretical physicist with expertise in condensed mater, or solid-state physics, and is credited with many contributions to the theory of the electronic structure of solids.
These include the calculation, with Joaquin Luttinger of Columbia University, of the electronic properties of silicon and germanium in the 1950s, development in 1954 of a new method for calculating the electronic structure of solids with Norman Rostoker of the University of California at Irvine; and formulation of a general theory of electronic structure, with Pierre Hohenberg of AT&T Bell Labs and Lu J. Shan of the University of California at San Diego.
Kohn earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics and physics and a master's degree in applied mathematics from the University of Toronto. He earned a doctorate in 1948 in theoretical physics from Harvard University, where he remained as an instructor for two years.
From 1979 through 1984, Kohn was director of UCSB's Institute for Theoretical Physics. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1969, Kohn was awarded the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan in 1988.
The Bethe Lecture Series, established by the Physics Department and the College of Arts and Sciences, honors Hans A. Bethe, Cornell professor emeritus of physics, whose description of the nuclear processes powering the sun won him a Nobel Prize in physics in 1967. The lectures have been given annually since 1977.
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