9 - Niels Bohr Models the Hydrogen Atom as a Quantized System with Compelling Exactness, but His Later Career Proves that Collaboration and Developing New Talent Can Become More Significant than the Groundbreaking Research of Any Individual

Abstract

Niels Bohr’s crowning achievement as a young postdoctoral scientist was to construct a model for the hydrogen atom that incorporated Rutherford’s new measurements showing that the atomic nucleus was very small. Bohr hypothesized that in the hydrogen atom the electron could circle the nucleus in orbits that were stationary states and did not radiate energy unless the electron made transitions from one state to another. This theory led to the first explanation of the line spectra emitted by excited atoms. Bohr made many other advances in science, but his greatest was to nurture and guide the contributions of many physicists, including Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger, to the development of a more complete quantum mechanics.