Ever since Max Planck introduced the idea of the quantum to the world, physicists have argued about whether reality is more like sand or water. Planck’s famous 1900 discovery that energy is grainy — ...

On 2 April, 1913, Niels Bohr wrote to his wife Margrethe: “My dearest little one. Rutherford should only know that it is you who have to do it all.” Bohr had just had a discussion with Ernest ...

Imagine firing tiny particles at a sheet of gold and expecting almost all of them to pass straight through. That was, broadly, what Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues expected. What happened instead ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Way back in 1913, everyone hailed Niels ...

Niels Bohr's Nobel Lecture on December 11, 1922, titled The Structure of the Atom, is one of the most significant contributions to our understanding of atomic structure and quantum mechanics. This ...

The U.S. also honored a famed scientist last week: Physicist Niels Henrik David Bohr, one of the fathers of atomic fission. President Eisenhower went to Washington’s National Academy of Sciences to ...

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 ...

Niels Bohr was born and educated in Copenhagen, Denmark. He lived, worked, and died there, too. But his mark on science and history was worldwide. His professional work and personal convictions were ...