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به نشریه الکترونیکی سی. پی. اچ.

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Nobel 1975

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Rotational Motion in Nuclei

Elementary Modes of Excitation in the Nucleus

Background for the Spheroidal Nuclear Model Proposal

"for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection"

Aage Niels Bohr	Ben Roy Mottelson	Leo James Rainwater

1/3 of the prize	1/3 of the prize	1/3 of the prize
Denmark	Denmark	USA
Niels Bohr Institute Copenhagen, Denmark	Nordita Copenhagen, Denmark	Columbia University New York, NY, USA
b. 1922	b. 1926 (in Chicago, IL, USA)	b. 1917 d. 1986

Autobiography: Aage Niels Bohr

I was born in Copenhagen on June 19, 1922, as the fourth son of Niels Bohr and Margrethe Bohr (née Nørlund). During my early childhood, my parents lived at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute), and the remarkable generation of scientists who came to join my father in his work became for us children Uncle Kramers, Uncle Klein, Uncle Nishina, Uncle Heisenberg, Uncle Pauli, etc. When I was about ten years old, my parents moved to the mansion at Carlsberg, where they were hosts for widening circles of scholars, artists, and persons in public life.

I went to school for twelve years at Sortedam Gymnasium (H. Adler's fæellesskole) and am indebted to many of my teachers, both in the humanities and in the sciences, for inspiration and encouragement.

I began studying physics at the University of Copenhagen in 1940 (a few months after the German occupation of Denmark). By that time, I had already begun to assist my father with correspondence, with his writing of articles of a general epistemological character, and gradually also in connection with his work in physics. In those years, he was concerned partly with problems of nuclear physics and partly with problems relating to the penetration of atomic particles through matter.

In October 1943, my father had to flee Denmark to avoid arrest by the Nazis, and the whole family managed to escape to Sweden, where we were warmly received. Shortly afterwards, my father proceeded to England, and I followed after him. He became associated with the atomic energy project and, during the two years until we returned to Denmark, in August 1945, we travelled together spending extensive periods in London, Washington, and Los Alamos. I was acting as his assistant and secretary and had the opportunity daily to share in his work and thoughts. We were members of the British team, and my official position was that of a junior scientific officer employed by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in London. In another context, I have attempted to describe some of the events of those years and my father's efforts relating to the prospects raised by the atomic weapons¹.

On my return to Denmark, I resumed my studies at the University and obtained a master's degree in 1946. My thesis was concerned with some aspects of atomic stopping problems.

For the spring term of 1948, I was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. On a visit during that period to Columbia University and through discussions with professor I.I. Rabi, I became interested in a newly discovered effect in the hyperfine structure in deuterium. This led on to my association with Columbia University from January 1949 to August 1950. As described in my lecture, this was for me a very fruitful association.

Soon after my return to Copenhagen, I began the close cooperation with Ben Mottelson which has continued ever since. The main direction of our work is described in the lectures included in the present volume. During the last fifteen years, a major part of our efforts has been connected with the attempt to present the status of our understanding of nuclear structure in a monograph, of which Volume I (Single-Particle Motion) appeared in 1969, and Volume II (Nuclear Deformations) in 1975. We feel that in our cooperation, we have been able to exploit possibilities that lie in a dialogue between kindred spirits that have been attuned through a long period of common experience and jointly developed understanding. It has been our good fortune to work closely together with colleagues at the Niels Bohr Institute and Nordita, including the many outstanding scientists who have come from all parts of the world and have so greatly enriched the scientific atmosphere and personal contacts.

I have been connected with the Niels Bohr Institute since the completion of my university studies, first as a research fellow and from 1956 as a professor of physics at the University of Copenhagen. After the death of my father in 1962, I followed him as director of the Institute until 1970.

For our whole circle, it has been a challenge to exploit the opportunities provided by the traditions of the Institute, of which I would like especially to mention two aspects. One concerns the fruitful interplay between experimental and theoretical investigations. The other concerns the promotion of international cooperation as a vital factor in the development of science itself and also as a means to strengthen the mutual knowledge and understanding between nations.

In 1957, Nordita (Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Atomfysik) was founded on the premises of the Niels Bohr Institute, and the two institutes operate in close association. I have been a member of the Board of Nordita from 1957 until 1975, and since then director of this institute.

In March 1950, in New York City, I was married to Marietta Soffer. We have three children, Vilhelm, Tomas, and Margrethe. Both for my wife and myself, the personal friendships that have grown out of scientific contacts with colleagues from many different countries have been an important part of our lives, and the travels we have made together in connection with the world-wide scientific co-operation have given us rich treasures of experiences.

1. Niels Bohr. His life and work as seen by his friends and colleagues, p. 191. Ed. by S. Rozental, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1967.

Autobiography: Ben Roy Mottelson

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 9, 1926, the second of three children of Goodman Mottelson and Georgia Mottelson (née Blum). My father held a university degree in engineering. My childhood home was a place where scientific, political and moral issues were freely and vigorously discussed. I attended primary school and high school in the village of La Grange, Illinois.

Graduating from high school during the second world war, I was sent by the U.S. Navy to Purdue University for officers training (V12 program) and remained there to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in 1947. My graduate studies were at Harvard University and my PhD work on a problem in nuclar physics was directed by Professor Julian Schwinger and completed in 1950.

Receiving a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University I chose to spend the year (1950-51) at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen (later the Niels Bohr Institute) where so much of modern physics had been created and where there were such special traditions for international cooperation. A fellowship from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission permitted me to continue my work in Copenhagen for two more years after which I held a research position in the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) theoretical study group that was formed in Copenhagen. With the founding of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Atomic Physics in Copenhagen (1957) I received a position as professor which I have held since. The spring term of 1959 was spent as visiting professor in the University of California at Berkeley.

The close scientific collaboration with Aage Bohr was begun in 1951 and has continued ever since. We feel that in this cooperation we have been able to exploit possibilities that lie in a dialogue between kindred spirits that have been attuned through a long period of common experience and jointly developed understanding. The lectures that are published in this volume attempt a discussion of the main influences that we have built on and the viewpoints that have been developed in this collaboration. It has been our good fortune to work closely together with colleagues at the Niels Bohr Institute and Nordita, including the many outstanding scientists who have come from all parts of the world and have so enriched the scientific atmosphere and personal contacts.

Married Nancy Jane Reno, 1948 (dec. 1975); 3 children, Malcolm Graham (1950), Daniel John (1953), Martha (1954). Married Britta Marger Siegumfeldt, 1983.*

* Updated by the Laureate in February 2005.

Autobiography: Leo James Rainwater

I was born December 9, 1917 in a small town in Idaho (Council) where my parents had moved to from California to operate a general store. My father, who had previously been a civil engineer, died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. My mother then moved with me and her mother to Hanford, Calif. in the San Joaquin Valley of California, where she was re-married to George Fowler a few years later. In my schooling through high school, I excelled mainly in chemistry, physics and mathematics. Due mainly to my record on an open chemistry competition given by Cal Tech, I was admitted, graduating in 1939 as a physics major. Carl David Anderson was my physics group recitation instructor when he received his Nobel Prize and Milliken was the President of the Institute. I had a short biology course taught by Thomas Hunt Morgan. In 1939 I began graduate study in physics as a teaching assistant at Columbia University where I have remained. During the first two years, I had courses under I.I. Rabi, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and J.R. Dunning. Fermi was working on neutron moderator assemblies which led to the first working nuclear "pile" after his group was moved to Chicago. Dunning, Booth, Slack, and Von Grosse held the basic patent on the gaseous diffusion process for ²³⁵U enrichment and were working on its development. This evolved into the Oak Ridge enrichment plants and the present U.S. technology for ²³⁵U enrichment.

In March 1942, I married Emma Louise Smith. We have three sons, James, Robert and William who are all now adults. We also had a daughter, Elizabeth Ann, who died while young.

During W.W. II, I worked with W.W. Havens, Jr. and C.S. Wu under Dr. Dunning (Manhattan Project) mainly doing pulsed neutron spectroscopy using the small Columbia cyclotron. I received my Ph.D after my thesis was de-classified in 1946. I continued at Columbia, first as an instructor, reaching the rank of full professor in 1952. About 1946 funding was obtained from the Office of Naval Research to build a synchrocyclotron which became operational in early 1950. I was involved with the facility development from the beginning and my research has used that facility ever since. The research included neutron resonance spectroscopy, the angular distribution of pion elastic and inelastic scattering on nuclei with optical model fitting. Best known are the muanic-atom-x-ray studies starting with the pioneering 1953 paper with Val Fitch which first established the smaller proton charge radii of nuclei.

Starting in 1948, I taught an advanced nuclear physics graduate course. The Maria Mayer shell model suggestion in 1949 was a great triumph and fitted my belief that a nuclear shell model should represent a proper approach to understanding nuclear structure. Combined with developments of Weizsaker's semi-empirical explanation of nuclear binding, and the Bohr-Wheeler 1939 paper on nuclear fission, emphasizing distorted nuclear shapes, I was prepared to see an explanation of large nuclear quadrupole moments. The full concept came to me in late 1949 when attending a colloquium by Prof. C.H. Townes who described the experimental situation for nuclear quadrupole moments. It was a fortuitous situation made even more so by the fact that I was sharing an office with Aage Bohr that year. We had many discussions of the implications, subsequently very successfully exploited by Bohr, Mottelson, and others of the Copenhagen Institute.

Since I joined the Columbia Physics Dept., in 1939, it has been my privilege to have as teachers and/or colleagues many previous Nobel Laureates in Physics: E. Fermi, I.I. Rabi, H. Bethe (Visiting Prof.), P. Kusch, W. Lamb, C.H. Townes, T.D. Lee and L. Cooper in addition to R.A. Milliken, C.D. Anderson, and T.H. Morgan (Biology) while I was an undergraduate at Cal Tech.

Organization Membership, etc.

Fellow: American Physical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers, New York Academy of Sciences, American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Sciences.

Member: National Academy of Sciences, Optical Society of America, American Association of Physics Teachers

Recipient: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for Physics, 1963.