MIT Professor Emeritus Keith H. Johnson, a quantum physicist who pioneered the use of theoretical methods in materials science and later applied his expertise to independent filmmaking, died in June in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 89.A professor in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), Johnson used first principles to understand how electrons behave in materials — that is, he turned to fundamental laws of nature to calculate their behavior, rather than relying solely on experimental data. This approach gave scientists deeper insight into materials before they were made…
