Bohr, Harald

In 1910 Niels began work on his Ph.D. degree. Harald, the younger brother, received his doctoral degree the same year. In those days, relatively few Ph.D.s were given, and a candidate s defense of his dissertation was a public event that was announced in the newspapers. The defenses weren t the relatively informal affairs that they are now the candidate was required to appear in white tie and tails. When Harald—who went on to become a noted mathematician—defended his dissertation, most of those attending were soccer players, and a Danish newspaper reported that the soccer player Harald Bohr had become a rising comet in the heavens of mathematics. ... 

Niels Henrik David Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 7, 1885. Christian Bohr, his father, was a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen and his mother, Ellen Adler, came from a prominent Jewish family. Niels had one older sister, Jenny, and one younger brother, Harald. The family home was a place where Professor Bohr and his university col-... 

Niels Bohr was one of the founders of modern atomic and nuclear physics. He was born into a family of intellectual and academic distinction. His father, Christian Bohr (1855-1911), was a professor of physiology his brother, Harald Bohr (1887-1951), was a professor of mathematics and his son, Aage Bohr (b. 1922), a professor of physics—all of them at the University of Copenhagen. 

Niels Hendrik David Bohr (1885-1962) as a boy lived in the shadow of his younger brother Harald, who played on the 1908 Danish Olympic Soccer Team and later became a distinguished mathematician. 

Christian and Ellen Bohr began married life in the Adler family townhouse that faced, across a wide street of ancient cobbles, Christian-borg Palace, the seat of the Folketing. Niels Bohr was bom in that favorable place on October 7, 1885, second child and first son. When his father accepted an appointment at the university in 1886 the Bohr family moved to a house beside the Surgical Academy, where the physiology laboratories were located. There Niels and his brother Harald, nineteen months younger, grew up. 

Harald Bohr was bright, witty, exuberant and assumed at first to be the smarter of the two brothers. At a very early stage, however, says Niels Bohr s later collaborator and biographer Stefan Rozental, Christian Bohr took the opposite view he realized Niels great abilities and special gifts and the extent of his imagination. The father phrased his realization in what would have been a cruel comparison if the brothers had been less devoted. Niels, he pronounced, was the special one in the family. ... 

Rutherford was well prepared for surprises, then, when Bohr came to see him again in mid-June. Bohr told Harald what he was on to in a letter on June 19, after the meeting ... 

Harald Bohr reported to his brother that autumn that the younger men at Gottingen do not dare to believe that [your paper] can be objectively right they find the assumptions too bold and fantastic. Against the continuing skepticism of many European physicists Bohr heard from de Hevesy that Einstein himself, encountered at a conference in Vienna, had been deeply impressed. De Hevesy passed along a similar tale to Rutherford ... 

Harald H0ff ding cf biographical note at Bohr (1972), p. xx. 

In the summer of 1912, Niels Bohr wrote to his older brother Harald Perhaps I have found out a little about the structure of atoms. His revolutionary model of the atom was published the following year. In an attempt to develop a theoretical model of the hydrogen atom that was consistent with the lines predicted by the Rydberg formula, Bohr proposed the following ... 

Niels Bohr was bom in 1885. His father was professor of medidne at the University of Copenhagen. As a boy Niels spent much time in his fether s laboratory and grew up in an intellectually stimulating environment. Together with his brother Harald, a prominent mathematician when adult, he also had time for sport. Both ofthem became clever soccer players, though Harald was the better. 

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