386 - Niels Bohr Typed Letter Signed on "the growth of the ideas of atomic constitution"

Niels Bohr Typed Letter Signed on "the growth of the ideas of atomic constitution" Danish physicist (1885-1962) who was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of atomic structure. TLS, one page, 7.5 x 9.5, Gl. Carlsberg letterhead, May 10, 1957. Letter to British physicist Edward Andrade, in full: "On my return from Italy I received the typescript of your Rutherford Lecture and have read it with great pleasure. Truly it gives a very vivid and instructive account of the growth of the ideas of atomic constitution, which gradually should obtain such a high degree of clarification. Although of course, as we discussed in our correspondence last year, there has been in the development an exchange and overlapping of ideas which do not appear directly in the published papers, I think that your description of the contributions from various sides is well balanced and I was especially pleased with your emphasis on the important work of Walter Kossel." In fine condition. Written near the end of Bohr’s career, this letter looks back on the formative years of modern atomic physics, when Ernest Rutherford’s nuclear model of the atom provided the foundation for Bohr’s revolutionary 1913 quantum theory. Bohr had worked in Rutherford’s Manchester laboratory and remained closely associated with the development of these ideas, giving particular weight to his assessment of Andrade’s historical account. His reference to the “exchange and overlapping of ideas” offers a revealing acknowledgment that the breakthroughs of early atomic theory were often more collaborative and fluid than the published scientific record suggests, while his praise of Walter Kossel recognizes another important early contributor to theories of atomic structure.