Remembering Walter Kohn, Billy Paul

Walter Kohn was the theoretical physicist who escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria as a young boy and went on to develop the density functional theory, for which he shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Pople. The density functional theory is a mathematical description of atomic structure, which represents an advance over the earlier Bohr and Schroedinger models of the atom. It is critical to understanding the electronic structure of materials. Billy Paul was the Philadelphia singer whose hit single “Me and Mrs. Jones” (1972) help launch the famous sound of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.