Picture: Niels henrik David Bohr

a physicist, Nobel Prize laureate, quantum mechanics researcher and one of the inventors of the atomic bomb. he was also an excellent soccer player. Denmark, 20th century

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Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize (1922). Born in Copenhagen to a Christian father and Jewish mother, raised a Lutheran. In 1913, he formulated the Bohr model, a planetary model in which the negatively charged electrons orbit a small, positively charged nucleus like the planets orbiting the sun (except that the orbits are not planar). Fled to Britain during World War II and joined the British and subsequently the American race to develop nuclear weapons. He returned to Denmark, and was appointed President of the Royal Danish Academy of Arts and Sciences. Was a lifelong advocator of using nuclear power solely for the purpose of peace.