Chemistry Nobel laureate Walter Kohn dies at the age of 93
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Vienna - US scientist Walter Kohn has died at 93, said the Nobel Foundation, which awarded him its 1998 chemistry prize for laying the groundwork for analysing molecules.
Kohn was born in Vienna in 1923. As he was Jewish, he and his sister were forced to flee the National Socialists in 1939.
He and his sister made it to Britain and he eventually settled in the United States, but his parents died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"Any reparation is impossible" for the crimes committed against his parents, he told Austrian press agency APA in 2012.
Kohn became a theoretical physicist and spent a major part of his career at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
He was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry because the density functional theory that he developed has greatly helped chemists understand the structure of atoms, molecules and materials.
The retired scientist died Tuesday in Santa Barbara.
- DPA
