Aage Niels Bohr
Most people believe that the atomic nucleus is spherical in shape, but did you know that it’s actually not? The credit for uncovering this fact goes to the physicist Aage Bohr.Bohr, who was born on June 19, 1922, challenged the widely accepted spherical model of the atomic nucleus, directly opposing the prevailing theory co-developed by his father, Niels Bohr a pioneer in quantum physics and Nobel Prize.
In collaboration with Ben Roy Mottelson and James Rainwater, the younger Bohr helped demonstrate that the shape of the atomic nucleus can vary due to deformations caused by protons and neutrons located at the outer edges of the nucleus. These particles move in different paths and interact with the protons and neutrons inside the nucleus. The previous model, known as the “liquid drop model,” portrayed the nucleus as spherical, based on the way the nuclear force binds protons and neutrons together, similar to how molecules behave in a drop of liquid.
This groundbreaking discovery earned Bohr and his two colleagues the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975, and has since become a cornerstone of our modern understanding of the internal structure of atoms.
