Bohr, Aage Niels (1922– )

Danish physicist who produced a new model of the nucleus of the atom in 1952, known as the collective model. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1975 for his discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei, and the development of the theory of nuclear structure. He was the son of physicist Niels Bohr.

Aage Bohr was born and educated in Copenhagen. During the German occupation of Denmark in World War II, he worked in London 1943–45. From 1946 he worked at his father's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, and became professor of physics at the University of Copenhagen in 1956. He was director of the Niels Bohr Institute (formerly the Institute of Theoretical Physics) 1963–70 and director of Nordita (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Atomic Physics) 1975–81. Aage Bohr, Ben Mottelson, and James Rainwater shared the 1975 Nobel Prize. Rainwater had suggested the theory in 1950 and Bohr and Mottelson obtained experimental results that proved it. The work of these three people paved the way for nuclear fusion.