Ben Roy Mottelson
American-Danish nuclear physicist (1926–2022)
Who was Ben Roy Mottelson?
Ben Roy Mottelson lived from July 9, 1926 to May 13, 2022. Mottelson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 9 July 1926, the son of Georgia (Blum) and Goodman Mottelson, an engineer. After graduating from Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Illinois, he joined the United States Navy and was sent to attend officers training at Purdue University, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1947. He then earned a PhD in nuclear physics from Harvard University in 1950. He moved to Institute for Theoretical Physics (later the Niels Bohr Institute) at the University of Copenhagen on the Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard, and remained in Denmark. Ben Roy Mottelson (9 July 1926 – 13 May 2022) was an American-Danish nuclear physicist.
Historical significance
He won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the non-spherical geometry of atomic nuclei. His thesis adviser was Julian Schwinger, the theoretical physicist who later won the Nobel Prize in 1975 for his work on quantum electrodynamics.