Mottelson, Ben(jamin Roy) (1926– )

US-born Danish physicist who with Aage Bohr and James Rainwater shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1975 for their discovery of the connection between collective and particle motion in atomic nuclei, and the development of the theory of nuclear structure.

Mottelson was born in Chicago, Illinois, and educated at Purdue University. Based in Copenhagen from 1950, he was at the Institute of Theoretical Physics to 1953, then held a position at CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research), and became professor at Nordita in 1957.

In the early 1950s Mottelson and Bohr together confirmed experimentally the theory worked out by Rainwater about the structure of the nucleus. Mottelson published several books and many scientific papers jointly with Bohr.