Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist. He was the second child and first son of Physiologist Christian Bohr and his wife Ellen. His siblings were Mathematician Harald Bohr and Jenny Bohr.

Niels Bohr received his Doctorate from Copenhagen University in 1911 and thereafter travelled to Great Britain where he studied at Cambridge and Manchester Universities, latterly under Ernest Rutherford. Whilst in Manchester he presented his model of the atom, with electrons orbiting a central nucleus, to Rutherford in the so-called “Manchester Memorandum”

In 1913 he published three papers concerning the structure of the atom for which he eventually received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922.

In 1916 Bohr was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at Copenhagen University and in 1921 the Institute of Theoretical Physics (later known as the Niels Bohr Institute) opened its doors and quickly became the epicentre for research into atomic and Nuclear Physics. During the 1920’s, Quantum Mechanics was developed at the Institute to explain sub-atomic physical phenomena. Due to Denmark’s neutrality in World War I, the institute became a mecca for physicists from all over the world and their collaboration was immortalised in Werner Heisenberg’s phrase “Der Kopenhagener Geist” (the “Copenhagen Spirit”).

During the 1930’s, Bohr worked tirelessly for the cause of refugee scientists fleeing Germany and the Soviet Union. After the German invasion of Denmark in 1940 he initially remained in Denmark but was forced to flee to Great Britain and the USA in 1943. For two years he was employed as part of the British ”Tube Alloys” atomic programme and visited the development centres at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge several times.

He returned to Denmark in 1945 as a revered elder-statesman of science. The institute he founded is still a leading force in the field of Theoretical Physics.

He was married to Margrethe Bohr (née Nørlund) from 1912 until his death. Together they had six sons, including the 1975 Nobel laureate in physics, Aage Bohr.