Liceo de Apodaca

Technology Demark
September 12 2012

8A
Patriotism

Daniel Escamilla Jimnez

Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in Copenhagen. He was part of the British team of physicists working on the Manhattan Project. Bohr married Margrethe Nrlund in 1912, and one of their sons, Aage Bohr, grew up to be an important physicist who in 1975 also received the Nobel Prize. Bohr has been described as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century.

Biography

Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1885. His father, Christian Bohr, was professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, while his mother, Ellen Adler Bohr, came from a wealthy Jewish family prominent in Danish banking and parliamentary circles despite having a religious background, he later became an atheist.His brother was Harald Bohr, a mathematician and Olympic footballer who played on the Danish national team. Niels Bohr was a passionate footballer as well, and the two brothers played a number of matches for the Copenhagen-based Akademisk Boldklub, with Niels in goal. Niels Bohr as a young man. Exact date of photo unknown. In 1903, Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at Copenhagen University, initially studying philosophy and mathematics. In 1905, prompted by a gold medal competition sponsored by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, he conducted a series of experiments to examine the properties of surface tension, using his father's laboratory in the university, familiar to him from assisting there since childhood. His essay won the prize, and it was this success that decided Bohr to abandon philosophy and adopt physics. He continued as a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen, under the physicist Christian Christiansen, receiving his doctorate in 1911.

In 1922, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them."The award recognized his early leading work in the emerging field of quantum mechanics. While at Manchester University, Bohr had adapted Rutherford's nuclear structure to Max Planck's quantum theory and so obtained a model of atomic structure which, with later improvements mainly as a result of Heisenberg's concepts remains valid to this day. Bohr published his model of atomic structure in 1913. Here he introduced the theory of electrons traveling in orbits around the atom's nucleus, the chemical properties of each element being largely determined by the number of electrons in the outer orbits of its atoms. Bohr also introduced the idea that an electron could drop from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one, in the process emitting a photon of discrete energy. This became a basis for quantum theory.

Later years
Following the war Bohr returned to Copenhagen. He continued to advocate the peaceful use of nuclear energy. When awarded the Order of the Elephant by the Danish government, he designed his own coat of arms which featured a taijitu and the motto in Latin: contraria sunt complementa: "opposites are complementary". He died in Copenhagen in 1962 of heart failure. He is buried in the Assistens Kierkegaard in the Nrrebro section of Copenhagen.