Niels Bohr's 127th birthday marked by Google doodle

Niels Bohr, famous Danish physicist and a Nobel Prize winner for his contribution to the field of physics, is the subject of Sunday's Google doodle.

Niels Bohr, was born Niels Henrik David Bohr on 7 October 1885 in Copenhagen, Denmark. His father Christian Bohr was a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and the man who observed the phenomenon called Bohr shift or Bohr effect. At age 18, Niels Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at Copenhagen University, initially studying philosophy and mathematics.

Niels Bohr continued as a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen receiving his doctorate in 1911. In 1912 joined Ernest Rutherford at Victoria University of Manchester, where he spent four years in association with the older physics professor and became part of the group that included scientists such as William Lawrence Bragg, James Chadwick and Hans Geiger, that involved itself with studying the structure of the atom.

Niels Bohr published his model of atomic structure in 1913 where he introduced the theory of electrons traveling in orbits around the atom's nucleus, the chemical properties of each element being largely determined by the number of electrons in the outer orbits of its atoms. Bohr also introduced the idea that an electron could drop from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one, in the process emitting a photon (light quantum) of discrete energy. This became a basis for quantum theory.

In 1922, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them."

Niels Bohr died in Copenhagen in 1962 of heart failure.

Best Google doodles of 2012

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