Death of Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr died on 18 November 1962 in Copenhagen, aged 77. A Danish physicist, Bohr transformed the understanding of the atom. In 1913 he proposed a model in which electrons occupy fixed energy levels and emit or absorb light when jumping between them, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. He founded and led the institute for theoretical physics in Copenhagen, which became a meeting place for the leading physicists of the age. His principle of complementarity and his interpretation of quantum mechanics, developed with colleagues such as Heisenberg, led to famous debates with Einstein. In 1943 he escaped German-occupied Denmark, and after the war he campaigned for international openness about nuclear weapons.

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