Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr
THE LIFE, DISCOVERIES AND WORKS OF NEILS BOHR
Andikan- Phoebe | J.E.T.S Research |

Niels Bohr, in full Niels Henrik David Bohr, (born October 7,
1885, Copenhagen, Denmark—died November 18, 1962, Copenhagen),
Danish physicist who is generally regarded as one of the foremost
physicists of the 20th century. He was the first to apply
the quantum concept, which restricts the energy of a system to certain
discrete values, to the problem of atomic and molecular structure. For
that work he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. His manifold
roles in the origins and development of quantum physics may be his
most-important contribution, but through his long career his
involvements were substantially broader, both inside and outside the
world of physics.
EARLY LIFE
Bohr was the second of three children born into an upper middle-class
Copenhagen family. His mother, Ellen (née Adler), was the daughter of
a prominent Jewish banker. His father, Christian, became a professor
of physiology at the University of Copenhagen and was nominated
twice for the Nobel Prize.
Enrolling at the University of Copenhagen in 1903, Bohr was never in

doubt that he would study physics. Research and teaching in that field
took place in cramped quarters at the Polytechnic Institute, leased to
the University for the purpose. Bohr obtained his doctorate in 1911 with
a dissertation on the electron theory of metals.
On August 1, 1912, Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund, and the marriage

proved a particularly happy one. Throughout his life, Margrethe was
his most-trusted adviser. They had six sons, the fourth of whom, Aage
N. Bohr, shared a third of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics in
recognition of the collective model of the atomic nucleus proposed in
the early 1950s.
PAGE 1
BOHR’S ATOMIC MODEL
BOHR MODEL OF THE ATOM

Bohr’s first contribution to the emerging new idea of quantum physics
started in 1912 during what today would be called postdoctoral
research in England with Ernest Rutherford at the University of
Manchester. Only the year before, Rutherford and his collaborators
had established experimentally that the atom consists of a heavy
positively charged nucleus with substantially lighter negatively
charged electrons circling around it at considerable distance.
According to classical physics, such a system would be unstable, and
Bohr felt compelled to postulate, in a substantive trilogy of articles
published in The Philosophical Magazine in 1913, that electrons could
only occupy particular orbits determined by the quantum of action
and that electromagnetic radiation from an atom occurred only when
an electron jumped to a lower-energy orbit. Although radical and
unacceptable to most physicists at the time, the Bohr atomic
model was able to account for an ever-increasing number of
experimental data, famously starting with the spectral line
series emitted by hydrogen.
PAGE 2
BOHR’S INSTITUTE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS
In the spring of 1916, Bohr was offered a new professorship at the
University of Copenhagen; dedicated to theoretical physics, it was the
second professorship in physics there. As physics was still pursued in
the cramped quarters of the Polytechnic Institute, it is not surprising
that already in the spring of 1917 Bohr wrote a long letter to
his faculty asking for the establishment of an Institute for Theoretical
Physics. In the inauguration speech for his new institute on March 3,
1921, he stressed, first, that experiments and experimenters were
indispensable at an institute for theoretical physics in order to test the
statements of the theorists. Second, he expressed his ambition to make
the new institute a place where the younger generation of physicists
could propose fresh ideas. Starting out with a small staff, Bohr’s
institute soon accomplished those goals to the highest degree.
NOBEL PRIZE
Already in his 1913 trilogy, Bohr had sought to apply his theory to the
understanding of the periodic table of elements. He improved upon
that aspect of his work into the early 1920s, by which time he had
developed an elaborate scheme building up the periodic table by
adding electrons one after another to the atom according to his atomic
model. When Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in 1922,
the Hungarian physical chemist Georg Hevesy, together with the
physicist Dirk Coster from Holland, were working at Bohr’s institute to
establish experimentally that the as-yet-undiscovered atomic element
72 would behave as predicted by Bohr’s theory. They succeeded in
1923, thus proving both the strength of Bohr’s theory and the truth in
practice of Bohr’s words at the institute’s inauguration about the
important role of experiment. The element was named hafnium (Latin
for Copenhagen).
PAGE 3
NUCLEAR PHYSICS - NIELS BOHR'S CYCLOTRON
In the early 1930s Bohr found use once more for his fund-raising
abilities and his vision of a fruitful combination of theory and
experiment. He realized early that the research front in theoretical
physics was moving from the study of the atom to the study of its
nucleus. Bohr turned to the Rockefeller Foundation, whose
“experimental biology”
program was designed to
improve conditions for the life
sciences. Together with
Hevesy and the Danish
physiologist August Krogh,
Bohr applied for support to
build a cyclotron—a kind
of particle accelerator recently
invented by Ernest O.
Lawrence in the United States—as a means to pursue biological
studies. Although Bohr intended to use the cyclotron primarily for
investigations in nuclear physics, it could also produce isotopes of
elements involved in organic processes, making it possible in particular
to extend the radioactive indicator method, invented and promoted by
Hevesy, to biological purposes. In addition to the support from the
Rockefeller Foundation, funds for the cyclotron and other equipment
for studying the nucleus were also granted to Bohr from Danish
sources.
PAGE 4

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Niels Bohr

THE LIFE, DISCOVERIES AND WORKS OF NEILS BOHR

Andikan- Phoebe | J.E.T.S Research |

Enrolling at the University of Copenhagen in 1903, Bohr was never in

On August 1, 1912, Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund, and the marriage

BOHR MODEL OF THE ATOM

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