|
Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen and educated at Copenhagen University.
|
|
Despite the university having no physics laboratory and only one professor in the discipline, Bohr designed a series of experiments that improved on Lord Rayleigh's model for measuring a liquid's surface tension.
|
|
Bohr won a gold medal from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters for this research, which he later improved on and republished.
|
|
His Master's thesis and later doctoral thesis on electron structure was not well known outside of Denmark, as the university required it to be published in Danish at the time.
|
|
A separate scientist actually came up with a similar conclusion as Bohr's theorems on his ground breaking work with electron theory, and they therefore share credit for it under the Bohrs-van Leeuwen theorem.
|
|
Bohr began the research on what would become known as the Bohr model of the atom in 1911, beginning his studies in England at the Cavendish Laboratory.
|
|
Bohr's research was not widely received by established physicists at the time, but younger researchers were impressed with his research on the model of the atom.
|
|
Ernest Rutherford invited Bohr to study at the Victoria University of Manchester and continue his research on atoms.
|
|
His papers were published in 1913 in Philosophical Magazine in which he expanded on both the work of Rutherford on nuclear structure and the quantum theory work proposed by Max Planck, adapting them into what became widely known as the Bohr model.
|
|
Bohr was one of the first to finalize a model that demonstrated electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom, expanding on Charles Darwin's earlier work.
|
|
He explained that each element on the periodic table had chemical properties that were determined by the number and behavior of their electrons.
|
|
Bohr was the first to theorize that an electron could move from a higher orbit to a lower one, and that in the process energy was emitted.
|
|
This model worked for hydrogen, but it was difficult to demonstrate its accuracy with other elements, specifically the chemically-similar rare earth elements.
|
|
It therefore formed the basis for other theories to follow.
|
|
In 1921, years of hard work led to Bohr's establishment of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Denmark. It is now known as the Niels Bohr Institute.
|
|
During the rise of the Nazis in Europe and the resulting World War II, Bohr was instrumental in helping Jewish scientists flee, securing them academic posts around the world.
|
|
Bohr came up with the idea to dissolve a number of scientists' Nobel Prize medals in aqua regia to prevent the Germans from confiscating them during the occupation; the gold was precipitated after the war and the Nobel Foundation recast them.
|
|
Bohr had been awarded his own Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922.
|
