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Nobel Prize Winning Physicist At UC Santa Barbara Dies

An internationally known physicist who was UC Santa Barbara’s first Nobel Laureate has died.

Walter Kohn died Wednesday night. He had been in failing health for some time. He received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1998, becoming the first of six UCSB Nobel laureates.  Kohn was honored for his development of a theory which helped us understand the electronic makeup of materials.

He was born in Austria, and was sent to England as a young child when the Nazis took over his homeland. His parents died in the Holocaust. he was then sent to Canada, where he went to college, and became a researcher. He joined UCSB in the 1980’s, as the founding director of the university’s new Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Kohn was 93 years old.

Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.