Lu Jeu Sham ( Chinese: 沈呂九) (born April 28, 1938) is an American physicist. He is best known for his work with Walter Kohn on the Kohn–Sham equations.

Biography

Lu Jeu Sham's family was from

Fuzhou Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian, China. The city lies between the Min River (Fujian), Min River estuary to the south and the city of Ningde to the north. Together, Fuzhou and Ningde make up the Eastern Min, Mindong linguistic and cultural regi ...

Fujian Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...

, but he was born in

British Hong Kong Hong Kong was under British Empire, British rule from 1841 to 1997, except for a Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II from 1941 to 1945. It was a crown colony of the United Kingdom from 1841 ...

on April 28, 1938. He was graduated from the Pui Ching Middle School in 1955 and then traveled to England for his higher education. He received his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

in mathematics (1st class honours) from Imperial College, University of London in 1960 and his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

in 1963. In 1963–1966, he worked with Prof. W. Kohn as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego. From 1966 to 1967, Sham worked in University of California, Irvine as assistant professor in Physics and from 1967 to 1968 in Queen Mary College, University of London as a Reader. He joined the faculty of University of California in 1968. Sham was a professor in the Department of Physics at

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

, eventually serving as department head. He is now a UCSD

professor emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

. Sham was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 1998.

Scientific contributions

Sham is noted for his work on

density functional theory Density functional theory (DFT) is a computational quantum mechanical modelling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure (or nuclear structure) (principally the ground state) of many-body ...

(DFT) with Walter Kohn, which resulted in the Kohn–Sham equations of DFT. The Kohn–Sham method is widely used in

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

. Kohn received a

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

in 1998 for the Kohn–Sham equations and other work related to DFT. Sham's other research interests include

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid State of matter, phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and elec ...

and optical control of electron spins in

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

nanostructures for quantum information processing.

Honors and awards

*Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1998) *Member of Academia Sinica (1998) *Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011) *Fellow of American Physics Society (1977) *Fellow of Optica (formerly OSA) (2009) *The Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics (2004) *The MRS Materials Theory Award (2019) *Humboldt Foundation Award (1978) *Guggenheim Fellowship (1983)

References

External links

Interview of Lu Sham by David Zierler on October 22, 2020, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sham, Lu Jeu 1938 births Living people University of California, San Diego faculty Hong Kong physicists Alumni of Imperial College London Alumni of the University of Cambridge Computational chemists Fellows of the American Physical Society American scientists of Asian descent