Since the very early days of our species, we have pondered the fundamental workings of the world and universe around us. This obsession with making sense of a seemingly chaotic and often scary world ...

Niels Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom—first published 100 years ago and commemorated in a special issue of Nature—is simple, elegant, revolutionary, and wrong. Well, “wrong” isn’t exactly ...

The Bohr atom is unquestionably a landmark in the history of physics. A century after its publication, it has inspired a remarkably diverse and ever-growing field of research. But to fully grasp the ...

Picture an atom, and you may imagine spherical electrons orbiting a nucleus packed with particles like neutrons. Only certain orbits - quantum levels - are possible. It's a simplistic model, yet ...

Photo: Niels Bohr's research notes for his new atomic theory Rutherford's find came from a very strange experience. Everyone at that time imagined the atom as a "plum pudding." That is, it was roughly ...

Born in 1885 to Christian Bohr – a professor of physiology – and Ellen Adler Bohr in Copenhagen, Denmark, Niels Bohr made numerous contributions to the field of physics over the course of his life, up ...