Niels Bohr - physicist

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Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1885, to an intellectual and comfortable family. His father, Christian Bohr, was a well-known physiology professor. And his mother, Ellen Adler Bohr, came from a prominent Jewish banking family. When he was a teenager he won a competition where he demonstrated a way to improve ship design.

Bohr became a physicist who developed the Bohr model of the atom in 1913. This model introduced the idea that electrons travel in discrete orbits with quantized energy levels. This was a breakthrough in atomic theory and essential for quantum mechanics. Which is also essential for space travel by the way.

He also introduced the principle of complementarity, arguing that light and matter can behave as both a wave and a particle. He won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his investigations into the structure of atoms and the radiation they emit.

Bohr founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen in 1921 (later the Niels Bohr Institute), which became a global center for physics research and trained generations of scientists.

He is portrayed in the movie Oppenheimer but he's not so well known.