Balmer, Johann Jacob

Babloyantz Agnes, 983 Bader Richard F.W., 665, 668, 672, 674-675, 716 Baker Jon, 706 Balakrishnan Ashok, 592 Bala Piotr, 369 Balmer Johann Jacob, 6 Banach Stefan, 260,... 

Bohr s theory was received with a certain amount of scepticism by Rutherford, but it did have the advantage of explaining various features of atomic spectra. There had been numerous attempts to rationalise the lines observed in atomic emission spectra since the invention of the spectroscope by Bunsen and Kirchhoff in 1859 (Chapter 9). Little progress was made until 1885 when Johann Jacob Balmer (1825-1898), a Swiss school teacher, showed that the wavelengths of the four lines then known in the hydrogen spectrum could be expressed in terms of a simple equation. In 1890 Balmer s formula was rearranged by Johannes Robert Rydberg (1854-1919) to the form... 

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