1885–1962 · Danish theoretical physicist · Nobel Prize in Physics, 1922
Niels Bohr (born Copenhagen, 7 October 1885; died there 18 November 1962) was the Danish theoretical physicist who gave quantum theory its first working picture of the atom, and who spent the rest of his life arguing about what that picture meant — most famously with Einstein. He took the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on atomic structure and the radiation atoms emit. He also attracted stories: colleagues and biographers recorded a steady stream of Bohr sayings, and this is one of several that circulate widely without ever surfacing in anything he actually wrote.