He dedicated his work toward the peaceful use of atomic physics and toward solving political problems arising from the development of atomic weapons of destruction. It was important to him, however, to use his skills for good and not violence. He spent the last two years of the war in England and the United States, where he got involved with the Atomic Energy Project. When the Nazis invaded Denmark in World War II, Bohr managed to escape to Sweden.

Later in life, he became president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, as well as a member of scientific academies all over the world.

In the same year that he began his studies with Rutherford, Bohr married the love of his life, Margaret Nørlund, with whom he had six sons. This work earned him a Nobel Prize of his own in 1922. In 1920, he was appointed the head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics.Ĭombining Rutherford's description of the nucleus and Planck's theory about quanta, Bohr explained what happens inside an atom and developed a picture of atomic structure. He went back to Copenhagen University in 1916 to become a professor of theoretical physics. Under Rutherford's tutelage, Bohr began studying the properties of atoms.īohr held a lectureship in physics at Copenhagen University from 1913 to 1914 and went on to hold a similar position at Victoria University in Manchester from 1914 to 1916. Thompson in England when he was introduced to Ernest Rutherford, whose discovery of the nucleus and development of an atomic model had earned him a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1908. In 1912, Bohr was working for the Nobel laureate J.J.

Niels bohr atomic theory