Niels Henrick David Bohr was born on 7 October 1885 in Copenhagen. He was one of the foremost physicists of the twentieth century. In 1911, he met Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory and began post-doctoral work at Victoria University, Manchester. He taught medical students at the University of Copenhagen beginning in 1913, eventually appointed as Chair of Theoretical Physics. After meeting with Heisenberg in 1941, he escaped Nazi arrest and met with the director of the Manhattan Project in 1943. Bohr returned to Copenhagen in 1945.
Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute) from 192l, 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’. His ‘Open Letter’ to the United Nations calling for international cooperation on nuclear energy led to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and he received the Atoms for Peace Award in 1957. The Niels Bohr Archive is responsible for the publication of the Niels Bohr Collected Works (1972–2008).
