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Niels Bohr
Life Details
Born: 7th October, 1885. Died: 18th November, 1962.
Introduction
Niels Bohr was Danish physicist who was regarded to be one of the foremost physicists of the 20th Century. One of the first scientists to apply the quantum concept, Bohr was also responsible for many other achievements both inside and outside the world of physics.
Early Life
The second of three children, he was born into an upper middle-class family in Copenhagen. His mother, Ellen Adler, was the daughter of a prominent Jewish banker. His father, Christian, was a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1902, Bohr enrolled at the University of Copenhagen and was never in doubt that he would study physics. He obtained his doctorate in 1911 with a dissertation on the electron theory of metals.
Marrying Margrethe Nørlund in 1912, the marriage was to be a long and happy one. They had six sons, the fourth being Aage Niels Bohr, who 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.
Working Life
Atomic Model
Bohr was called to England to work with Ernest Rutherford. His work detailed that the atom consisted of a heavy positively charged nucleus with substantially lighter negatively charged electrons circling around it at a considerable distance. This work was radical for it's time, and other physicists were not accepting this information, despite the fact it accounted for an ever-increasing number of experimental data, including the now famous spectral line series emitted by hydrogen.
Manhattan Project
Like a lot of physicists at the time, Niels Bohr was called upon to help work on the Manhattan Project, a project that would inevitably see the advent of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
His work on the atomic bomb project included the so-called initiator for the plutonium bomb. He soon realised that the need for an open world to halt any nuclear war was necessary, and he set out to inform the other ally in the war - the Soviet Union - of the project.
Post-War
After the war, Bohr continued his work on informing for an open world, speaking with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He didn't convince them of this, and they thought he was working as a Russian spy. He even wrote an open letter to the United Nations in 1950.
Niels Bohr returned home in 1945. He was greeted as a hero, and he set up his institute and was central to establishing the research facility at Risø, near Roskilde, created to introduce nuclear power to Denmark. This has never happened. He was also instrumental in the establishment of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
Death
Bohr was a prolific writer, and has more than 100 publications to his name. After suffering from a stroke, he died in November 1962.
