Shoon Kyung Kim

Shoon Kyung Kim (, 29 February 1920 – 14 March 2003) was a South Korean theoretical chemist whose work systematized symmetry and representation theory for molecular and crystalline systems. He held faculty posts at Seoul National University (1951–1965), the University of Louisville (1966–1969), and Temple University (1969–1990). He authored the Cambridge monograph Group Theoretical Methods and Applications to Molecules and Crystals.

Kim was the founding president (1972) of the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA).

Education Kim earned a B.S. in chemistry from Osaka University (1944) and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale University (1956). Earlier, Kim introduced a correspondence-theorem method for constructing symmetry-adapted linear combinations (SALCs) and symmetry coordinates.

Honors Kim was designated a “Person of Distinguished Service to Science and Technology” by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST). and the Order of Civil Merit is a presidential order of five grades, with Mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon) as the highest.

Legacy KSEA established the “Shoon Kyung Kim Scholarship” (2005) in his memory.

Selected works

Personal life and death Kim died on 14 March 2003; he had been a professor at Temple University for 20 years.