Niels Bohr

Biography

Born from Christian Bohr, confession Lutheran, and Ellen Adler, of Jewish origin, Niels Bohr obtained a doctorate at the university of Copenhagen in 1911. It was directed by Ernest Rutherford with Manchester (England). His/her brother Harald Bohr was a famous mathematician.

Basing itself on the theories of Rutherford, it published in 1913 a model of the structure of the atom. This theory presents the Atome as a core around of which revolve of the electron S, the orbits furthest away from the core including/understanding the most electrons, which determines the chemical properties of the atom. The electrons have the possibility of passing from a layer to another, emitting a Photon. This theory is at the base of the quantum Mécanique.

In 1916, Bohr became professor at the University of Copenhagen then, in 1920, director of the very new Institute of the theoretical physics.

Bohr is also at the origin of the Principe of complementarity: objects can be analyzed separately and each analysis will make conclude with contrary properties. For example, the physicists think that the Lumière is at the same time a Onde and a beam of particles, the photons.

One of the most famous students of Bohr was Werner Heisenberg which became responsible for the project of German atomic bomb during the Second world war. In 1943, Bohr escaped from Denmark occupied towards the the United States - via the Sweden then London - and worked with the National laboratory of Los Alamos within the framework of the Projet Manhattan.

After the war, it returned to Copenhagen and militated for a peaceful use of the nuclear energy, in particular with the creation of the National laboratory Risø in 1956, which was worth to him to be prize winner of the Atoms for Peace Award in 1957.

He died in Copenhagen the November 18th 1962.

Honors

In 1921, he was prize winner of the Médaille Hughes. In 1922, it accepted the Nobel Prize of physics for its development of quantum mechanics. He becomes foreign member of the Royal Society in 1926. He was also prize winner of the Franklin Médaille in 1926, of the Faraday Lectureship of the Royal society off chemistry in 1930 and of the Médaille Copley in 1938.

The element Bohrium (Atomic number 107) was named in its honor.

Anecdote

A modern legend allots to Niels Bohr an anecdote concerning the levelling of one building using a Baromètre. This history in fact would have been written in the Reader' S Digest in 1958, and the history would have been transformed with the wire of time into an anecdote presumedly real and allotted to Niels Bohr. One can wonder whether the recourse to this famous person is not a manner of transforming an anecdote amusing into a Pamphlet against the “rigidity of the secondary education” opposed to the “Créativité”.

See also: Amorce=Pour more, read the article on the, Baromètre of Bohr

Quotation

Whoever is not shocked by the quantum theory does not include/understand it. (Quoted by Abraham Feed, Niels Bohr' S Times, in Physics, Philosophy, and Polity , Oxford university Close (1991)

See too

Interpretation of Copenhagen

Be-X-old: НільсБор Simple: Niels Bohr Zh-yue: 玻爾

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