Niels Bohr
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Niels Henrik David Bohr
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1922
Born: 7 October 1885, Copenhagen, Denmark
Died: 18 November 1962, Copenhagen, Denmark
Affiliation at the time of the award: Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark
Prize motivation: "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them."
Prize share: 1/1
Work
The discovery of the electron and radioactivity in the late 19th century led to different models being proposed for the atom’s structure. In 1913, Niels Bohr proposed a theory for the hydrogen atom, based on quantum theory that some physical quantities only take discrete values. Electrons move around a nucleus, but only in prescribed orbits, and If electrons jump to a lower-energy orbit, the difference is sent out as radiation. Bohr’s model explained why atoms only emit light of fixed wavelengths, and later incorporated the theories on light quanta.
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