Bohr’s First Theories of the Atom
DOI: 10.1063/1.881014
When confronted with a case in which an accepted theory appears to fail, the physicist, like anyone else, has a choice of strategies. The most obvious, which is also that recommended by armchair methodologists, is to invent an entirely new theory; an example might be Johannes Kepler’s system of planetary motions. The most likely strategy, because it involves the least reconstruction, is to seek the slightest departure from received ideas that will save the phenomena; an example is John Couch Adams’s supposition of the existence of a distant planet to account for irregularities in the motions of Uranus. In both of the examples the strategies worked: Kepler’s system, transformed by Newton, became the basis of the world of classical physics; Adams’s calculations, and those of his French contemporary Urbain J. J. Leverrier, led to the discovery of Neptune.
References
1. For a more detailed account of Bohr’s early work, see J. L. Heilbron, T. S. Kuhn, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 1, 211 (1969).
For a lively portrait of Bohr during the period covered in this article, see L. Rosenfeld, E. Rüdinger in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by His Friends and Colleagues, S. Rozental, ed., North‐Holland, Amsterdam (1968) p. 38.2. For an overview of the early history of theories of atomic structure, 1900–1922, see J. L. Heilbron in History of Twentieth‐Century Physics, C. Weiner, ed., Academic, New York (1977), p. 40.
3. The quotations by Bohr in this article are taken from his Collected Works, a multivolume series that began in 1972 and is continuing, L. Rosenfeld, gen. ed., vols. 1–4, E. Rüdinger, gen. ed., vol. 5, North‐Holland, Amsterdam.
4. P. Langevin, M. de Broglie, eds., La théorie du rayonnement et des quanta, Gauthier‐Villars, Paris (1912).
More about the Authors
John L. Heilbron. University of California, Berkeley.
