Bryan Earl Kohler; Physical Chemist and Educator

Bryan Earl Kohler, 56, physical chemist and educator who studied interaction of molecules with light. That molecular research earned several awards for Kohler, including Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships. He was elected to the American Physical Society and the New York Academy of Sciences. A native of Utah, Kohler studied at the universities of Utah and Chicago and at Caltech. He began his teaching career at Harvard University and taught at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he served as chairman of the chemistry department. At the time of his death, Kohler was a professor at UC Riverside. On Wednesday in Riverside of brain cancer.