WHAT'S MY STYLE
Niels Bohr
 


Profile: Scintillator/Evokateur/Visionary
Profile Boss: Evokateur

Why Scintillator

Niels displayed great talent with his hands and was able to take apart and put together mechanical things when he was very young. Studied physics, played soccer.

Good sense of humor:
Never express yourself more clearly than you can think.

The Niels Bohr stamp from Denmark

Niels Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field.
When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.
There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

Niels closed most public speeches with stories to end on a humorous note but that further drove his point home: "One of our neighbors in Tisvilde once fixed a horseshoe over the door to his house. When a common friend asked him, `But are you really superstitious? Do you honestly believe that this horseshoe will bring you luck?' he replied, `Of course not; but they say it works even if you don't believe in it.'"

Why Evokateur...

Lived, worked, and died in Copenhagen Denmark. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. Donated his gold Nobel medal to the Finnish war effort . After German occupation of Denmark, and because he was Jewish and because he refused to do research for Germany, he traveled to Los Alamos, New Mexico to advise the scientists developing the first atomic bomb (US Manhattan Project) . He returned to Copenhagen after the war.

Why Visionary...

Personal warmth. An excellent administrator. Many of Bohr's collaborators in those years have written lovingly about the extraordinary spirit of the (Bohr) institute, where young scientists from many countries worked together and played together in a lighthearted mood that concealed both their absolutely serious concern with physics and the darkening world outside. "Even Bohr," wrote H.B.G. Casimir, one of the liveliest of the group, "who concentrated more intensely and had more staying power than any of us, looked for relaxation in crossword puzzles, in sports, and in facetious discussions."

Interesting note:
Married and had six sons, (4 lived) one of whom, Aage, followed his father into physics—and into the ranks of Nobel Prize-winners.

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