Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885 – 1962) was a Danish physicist known in particular for his work on quantum theory. He won the 1922 Nobel prize in physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them".
Bohr worked at the University of Copenhagen, and the common interpretation of quantum mechanics developed by him there is known as the 'Copenhagen Interpretation'. Bohr engaged with the philosophy of his subject, and has been considered a 'philosopher of experiment' (Camillleriin, 2017).
Bohr is one of the key characters represented in the biographical play 'Copenhagen' (by Michael Frayn) which deals with the visit to Bohr in 1941 by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg.
At the time, during the second world war, Bohr was in contact with physicists both in Germany and in Allied nations, and Heisenberg was working for the Nazi regime on nuclear physics and had been charged with developing an atomic weapon. (The German effort shifted from building a weapon to attempting to build a nuclear powered engine, leading to much discussion since on whether this was because the German scientists genuinely did not think an atomic weapon was within reach, or simply did not want to provide one for the Hitler regime.)
Work cited:
- Camillleriin, Kristian (2017) Why do we find Bohr obscure? Reading Bohr as a philosopher of experiment, in, Neils Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics. Twenty-first-century perspectives (Jan Faye & Henry J. Folse, eds.) Bloomsbury Academic: London, pp.19-46.
