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Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who made significant contributions to atomic physics and quantum mechanics. His Bohr model, while not entirely accurate, is useful for teaching students about atomic physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 and founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen. Bohr introduced the idea of complementarity, which challenged classical physics. He fled to London during World War II and participated in the atomic bomb project in the United States. Bohr advocated for sharing atomic secrets with the international scientific community. He died in 1962, but his legacy lives on in classrooms around the world.
Niels Bohr (1885-1962) was a Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner who made several fundamental contributions to our understanding of atomic physics and quantum mechanics.
Many students first encounter Bohr’s thinking in middle or high school science classes, in the form of the Bohr model, which depicts electrons as dots on orbitals surrounding a central nucleus. While Bohr’s model is not an accurate representation of the atom—the location of an electron is uncertain and is best represented as a nebulous probability distribution—it is pragmatically useful for teaching students the basics of atomic physics. The Bohr model describes how an atom has a series of energy levels that electrons can occupy, called orbitals, with fixed limits of occupancy. It also shows how electrons emit and absorb photons and change energy levels accordingly.
Bohr developed many of the concepts underlying his model of the atom while working at the University of Copenhagen. in the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s. In 1922 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation they emanate”. In 1921, Bohr founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, which became a magnet for theoretical physicists in the 1920s and 1930s. One of his most famous students was Werner Hisenberg, who helped develop the foundations of quantum mechanics and was one of Germany’s leading physicists.
Neils Bohr developed the radically new idea of complementarity, that physical objects or phenomena could be analyzed as having two contradictory properties. For example, he introduced the idea that light is both a particle and a wave. This was a radical departure from the determinism of classical physics, advocated by scientists such as Einstein. Bohr and Einstein debated these and other points throughout their lives, and even today physicists are torn between the two positions.
Bohr fled the invading Nazis in 1943 when he fled to London. From there he went to the United States to help with the project to build an atomic bomb, where he participated more as a model than anything else. Concerned about a nuclear arms race, Bohr said he went to America and joined the project only because it would be done with or without his help. Bohr advocated sharing atomic secrets with the international scientific community, a position that earned him the ire of politicians such as Winston Churchill, the British prime minister.
Bohr died in Copenhagen in 1962, but his legacy can be seen in any classroom where physics or chemistry is taught.
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