Ben Mottelson
| Ben Roy Mottelson | |
|---|---|
1963 in Copenhagen
|
|
| Born |
July 9, 1926 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Residence | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Nationality | Danish–American |
| Fields | Nuclear physics |
| Institutions | Nordita |
| Alma mater |
Purdue University, B.S. 1947 Harvard University, Ph.D. 1950 |
| Doctoral advisor | Julian Schwinger |
| Known for | Geometry of atomic nuclei |
| Notable awards | Atoms for Peace Award (1969) John Price Wetherill Medal (1974) Nobel Prize in Physics (1975) |
| Spouse | Nancy Jane Reno (1948-1975; 3 children) Britta Marger Siegumfeldt (m. 1983) |
Ben Roy Mottelson (born July 9, 1926) is an American-born Danish nuclear physicist. He won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the non-spherical geometry of atomic nuclei.
Mottelson was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Georgia (Blum) and Goodman Mottelson, an engineer. He graduated from Lyons Township High School in LaGrange, Illinois. He received a Bachelor's degree from Purdue University in 1947, and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Harvard University in 1950.
He moved to Institute for Theoretical Physics (later the Niels Bohr Institute) in Copenhagen on the Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard, and remained in Denmark. In 1953 he was appointed staff member in CERN's Theoretical Study Group, which was based in Copenhagen, a position he held until he became professor at the newly formed Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) in 1957. In 1971 he became a naturalized Danish citizen.
In 1950–51, James Rainwater and Aage Bohr had developed models of the atomic nucleus which began to take into account the behaviour of the individual nucleons. These models, which moved beyond the simpler liquid drop treatment of the nucleus as having effectively no internal structure, were the first models which could explain a number of nuclear properties, including the non-spherical distribution of charge in certain nuclei. Mottelson worked with Aage Bohr to compare the theoretical models with experimental data. In three papers which were published in 1952–53, Bohr and Mottelson demonstrated close agreement between theory and experiment, for example showing that the energy levels of certain nuclei could be described by a rotation spectrum. This work stimulated new theoretical and experimental studies.
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