Niels Bohr

"Prediction is difficult, especially the future."

Time Period: 1885 - 1962

Background: Danish physicist Niels Bohr is most famous for his pioneering work in atomic theory. He studied at the Univeristy of Copenhagen and then to Cambridge and Manchester, England. He worked under the direction of Rutherford and Planck, and began to think on atomic structure, after he decided that Rutherford's theory of the atom did not make sense.

Belief: Rutherford completed a gold foil experiment to prove that electrons orbit the nucleus like planets orbit the sun. Bohr found a faulty, for electrons would emit energy as they rotated around the nucleus, and then eventually spiraled into the nucleus itself. He proposed that electrons were orbiting, but only at specific distances from the nucleus; they could exist in one orbit or another, but nowhere inbetween. He also proposed that electrons had specific energies in each orbit. Electrons closer to the nucleus had lower energies than electrons farther away. With this information, Bohr proposed his quantum mechanical model of the atom in 1913

Contribution: Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, Bohr successfully created the structure of the atom as we know today as the planetary atomic model. A great leap in contribution for the field in atomic theory, the puzzle of the atom was almost complete.