WALTER KOHN
NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATE
I met Walter when I restored a portion of Roman Vishniac's science photography for his daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn. She married Walter, a theoretical physicist. He, along with John Pople, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in chemistry in 1998 for his contributions to the understanding of the electronic properties of Silicon.
At age 16, Walter escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria on The Kindertransport, finding himself sent to an internment camp in Canada that housed enemy aliens; i.e, war-speak for someone not an official citizen of Canada. However, he was able to continue his education there and go on to study physics and then complete his Ph.D at Harvard. His brilliance was obvious to all that met him, even at an early age. Even so, when in the Canadian camp he was forced to wear a shirt with a bulls-eye on the back of it. One of the greatest minds in history could have lost his life on any given day with just one wrong move. Walter, Mara and I would drink schnapps long into the evening, theorizing how to make a better world for us all. He lived to age 94, his wife Mara, to 92. May their memories be for a blessing.