Niels Bohr (1885–1962) was a Danish physicist who created the Bohr model, the first widely accepted model of atomic structure. A central figure of 20th-century physics, he received the Nobel prize in 1922. In three articles published in 1913, he applied old quantum theory to restrict the revolving electrons to stable orbits, creating the Bohr model of the atom. Faced with the opposing particle and wave interpretations of atomic phenomena in the new quantum mechanics, he proposed the complementarity principle of using both interpretations to fully explain the results. He founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, and predicted the existence of a new element, which was named hafnium after the Latin name for Copenhagen. Later, the element bohrium was named after him. During the 1930s, he helped refugees from Nazism. In September 1943, after receiving word of his impending arrest by the Germans, he fled to Sweden, then to Britain, where he joined the British Tube Alloys nuclear weapons project, and later the Manhattan Project. After the war, Bohr was involved with the establishment of CERN. (Full article...)
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