Who is bohr and what did he discover

In , Bohr received the Atoms for Peace Award for his trailblazing theories and efforts to use atomic energy responsibly. Bohr was a prolific writer with more than publications to his name.

After having a stroke, he died on November 18, , in Copenhagen. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Thomson was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose research led to the discovery of electrons.

Physicist Enrico Fermi built the prototype of a nuclear reactor and worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. Albert Einstein was a physicist who developed the general theory of relativity. He is considered one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, in Physics, and with her later win, in Chemistry, she became the first person to claim Nobel honors twice.

Her efforts with her husband Pierre led to the discovery of polonium and radium, and she championed the development of X-rays. Alexander Fleming was a doctor and bacteriologist who discovered penicillin, receiving the Nobel Prize in There were a few problems with the model, however.

For example, according to classical physics, the electrons orbiting the nucleus should lose energy until they spiral down into the center, collapsing the atom. Bohr proposed adding to the model the new idea of quanta put forth by Max Planck in That way, electrons existed at set levels of energy, that is, at fixed distances from the nucleus. If the atom absorbed energy, the electron jumped to a level further from the nucleus; if it radiated energy, it fell to a level closer to the nucleus.

His model was a huge leap forward in making theory fit the experimental evidence that other physicists had found over the years. A few inaccuracies remained to be ironed out by others over the next few years, but his essential idea was proved correct. He received the Nobel Prize for this work in , and it's what he's most famous for.

But he was only 37 at the time, and he didn't stop there. Among other things, he put forth the theory of the nucleus as a liquid drop, and the idea of "complementarity" -- that things may have a dual nature as the electron is both particle and wave but we can only experience one aspect at a time. They had six sons, one of whom, Aage, followed his father into physics -- and into the ranks of Nobel Prize-winners.

Bohr returned to Denmark as a professor at the University of Copenhagen, and in founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics -- sponsored by the Carlsberg brewery! Also, Bohr predicted that the undiscovered atomic element 72 would resemble zirconium. His prediction was correct and Hafnium was discovered in The element took its name from Hafnia , the Latin version of Copenhagen , the home town of Bohr.

In , Niels Bohr for the first time formulated the principle of complementarity , which states that on the atomic level a physical phenomenon expresses itself differently depending on the experimental setup used to observe it. Thus, light appears sometimes as waves and sometimes as particles.

Examples of complementary properties thus include wave-particle duality. Between and , three leading twentieth century physicists — Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli , devised the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The act of measurement affects the system and causes it to select one of the various possible values after measurement. This feature is known as wavefunction collapse. The Copenhagen interpretation still provides a conceptual basis for quantum mechanics and remains among the most prominent interpretations of the theory.

In , Niels Bohr formulated the Compound-nucleus model. It explained nuclear reactions as a two-stage process. First the bombarding particle becomes an integral part of a new, highly excited, unstable nucleus, called a compound nucleus.

The compound nucleus then loses its energy in different ways, such as losing a neutron or emitting gamma rays. The compound-nucleus model is successful in explaining nuclear reactions induced by relatively low-energy bombarding particles. In , Bohr collaborated with American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler to develop the liquid drop model in nuclear physics to explain the mechanism of fission.