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Aage Niels Bohr
(1922)
Danish physicist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics with Ben
R. Mottelson and James Rainwater for their work in determining the asymmetrical
shapes of certain atomic nuclei.
Bohr was educated at the University of Copenhagen, where he received
his doctorate in 1954. During the 1940s he worked as assistant to his
father, Niels Bohr (1922 Nobel physics laureate), on the development
of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M. From 1946 he was associated with
the Niels Bohr Institute of Theoretical Physics, founded in Copenhagen
by his father, whom he succeeded as director from 1963 to 1970. From
experiments inspired by the theories of James Rainwater and conducted
in collaboration with Ben R. Mottelson in the early 1950s, Bohr discovered
that the motion of subatomic particles can distort the shape of the
nucleus, thus challenging the widely accepted theory that all nuclei
are perfectly spherical. This discovery was important for the understanding
and development of nuclear fusion. Bohr's writings include Rotational
States of Atomic Nuclei (1954) and Nuclear Structure, 2 vol. (1969,
1975).
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