Niels Bohr Institute > Who, What, When > > Niels Bohr's career > The Nobel Prize
1922-01-01
The Nobel Prize
By the early 1920s, after Bohr had become a professor (1916) and had obtained his own institute at the University of Copenhagen (1921), he was able to explain the entire periodic table of elements by means of the atomic theory.
In the autumn of 1922 it was announced that Bohr would receive that year's Nobel Prize for his work. This was a dramatic reversal for the Nobel institution, which had so far favoured progress in instrumentation and had been particularly doubtful about the new development in physics involving quanta.
However, there was still great opposition in the Nobel Committee to Einstein's theory of relativity, for which, incidentally, Bohr had proposed Einstein for the Prize in his first-ever nomination in 1920.
In view of the record number of nominations for Einstein, it was difficult for the Nobel institution to ignore him, so in addition to awarding Bohr the 1922 Prize, it gave Einstein the delayed Prize for 1921 - not for relativity but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
Thus it was that the two giants of twentieth century physics not only received the Nobel Prize in the same year, but even in the same field - atomic physics. In his congratulatory letter to Einstein, Bohr commented how appropriate it was that Rutherford, Planck, and now Einstein, had received the Prize in this field before he did so himself.
In his reply Einstein took Bohr's comment to be a truly ‘Bohrish' expression of humility. At the same time, however, it is evidence for Bohr's satisfaction, which he also stated elsewhere, that his own field was finally getting the recognition it deserved.
(Written by Finn Aaserud, director, Niels Bohr Archive)