William Lipscomb vs Walter Kohn

William N. Lipscomb Jr. (1919–2011) was an American inorganic chemist who earned his PhD under Linus Pauling at Caltech before joining the faculty at Harvard University. He was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of the structure and bonding of boron hydrides (boranes), introducing the concept of three-center two-electron bonds to explain their unusual bonding. His work built...

Walter Kohn was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to the fields of quantum mechanics and physical chemistry. He is best known for developing density functional theory (DFT), which revolutionized the way scientists calculate the electronic structure of atoms, molecules, and solid-state materials. By focusing on overall electron density rather than c...