bohr's experiment 1922

CERN Accelerating science

Atomic flashback: A century of the Bohr model

In July 1913, Niels Bohr published the first of a series of three papers introducing his model of the atom

12 July, 2013

By Kelly Izlar

Niels Bohr, a founding member of CERN, signs the inauguration of the Proton Synchrotron on 5 February 1960. On the right are François de Rose and then Director-General Cornelius Jan Bakker (Image: CERN)

The most instantly recognizable image of an atom resembles a miniature solar system with the concentric electron paths forming the planetary orbits and the nucleus at the centre like the sun. In July of 1913, Danish physicist Niels Bohr published the first of a series of three papers introducing this model of the atom, which became known simply as the Bohr atom.

Bohr, one of the pioneers of quantum theory, had taken the atomic model presented a few years earlier by physicist Ernest Rutherford and given it a quantum twist.

Rutherford had made the startling discovery that most of the atom is empty space. The vast majority of its mass is located in a positively charged central nucleus, which is 10,000 times smaller than the atom itself. The dense nucleus is surrounded by a swarm of tiny, negatively charged electrons.

Bohr, who worked for a key period in 1912 in Rutherford’s laboratory in Manchester in the UK, was worried about a few inconsistencies in this model. According to the rules of classical physics, the electrons would eventually spiral down into the nucleus, causing the atom to collapse. Rutherford’s model didn’t account for the stability of atoms, so Bohr turned to the burgeoning field of quantum physics, which deals with the microscopic scale, for answers.

Bohr suggested that instead of buzzing randomly around the nucleus, electrons inhabit orbits situated at a fixed distance away from the nucleus. In this picture, each orbit is associated with a particular energy, and the electron can change orbit by emitting or absorbing energy in discrete chunks (called quanta). In this way, Bohr was able to explain the spectrum of light emitted (or absorbed) by hydrogen, the simplest of all atoms.

Bohr published these ideas in 1913 and over the next decade developed the theory with others to try to explain more complex atoms. In 1922 he was rewarded with the Nobel prize in physics for his work.

However, the model was misleading in several ways and ultimately destined for failure. The maturing field of quantum mechanics revealed that it was impossible to know an electron’s position and velocity simultaneously. Bohr’s well-defined orbits were replaced with probability “clouds” where an electron is likely to be.

But the model paved the way for many scientific advances. All experiments investigating atomic structure - including some at CERN, like those on antihydrogen and other exotic atoms at the Antiproton Decelerator , and at the On-Line Isotope Mass Separator ( ISOLDE) - can be traced back to the revolution in atomic theory that Rutherford and Bohr began a century ago.

"All of atomic and subatomic physics has built on the legacy of these distinguished gentlemen," says University of Liverpool’s Peter Butler who works on ISOLDE. 

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Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics

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Among physicists working at Bohr’s institute between the World Wars, the “Copenhagen Spirit” came to denote the very special social milieu there, comprising a completely informal atmosphere, the opportunity to discuss physics without any concern for other matters, and, for the specially privileged, the unique opportunity of working with Bohr.

Notwithstanding the important experimental work performed by Hevesy, Coster, and others, it was the theorists who led the way. In 1925 Werner Heisenberg of Germany developed the revolutionary quantum mechanics , which, in contrast to its predecessor, the so-called “old quantum theory” that drew on classical physics, constituted a fully independent theory. During the academic year 1926–27, Heisenberg served as Bohr’s assistant in Copenhagen , where he formulated the fundamental uncertainty principle as a consequence of quantum mechanics. Bohr, Heisenberg, and a few others then went on to develop what came to be known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which still provides a conceptual basis for the theory. A central element of the Copenhagen interpretation is Bohr’s complementarity principle , presented for the first time in 1927 at a conference in Como , Italy. According to complementarity, on the atomic level a physical phenomenon expresses itself differently depending on the experimental setup used to observe it. Thus, light appears sometimes as waves and sometimes as particles. For a complete explanation, both aspects, which according to classical physics are contradictory, need to be taken into account. The other towering figure of physics in the 20th century, Albert Einstein , never accepted the Copenhagen interpretation, famously declaring against its probabilistic implications that “God does not play dice.” The discussions between Bohr and Einstein, especially at two of the renowned series of Solvay Conferences in physics, in 1927 and 1930, constitute one of the most-fundamental and inspired discussions between physicists in the 20th century. For the rest of his life, Bohr worked to generalize complementarity as a guiding idea applying far beyond physics.

In the early 1930s Bohr found use once more for his fund-raising abilities and his vision of a fruitful combination of theory and experiment. He realized early that the research front in theoretical physics was moving from the study of the atom as a whole to the study of its nucleus. Bohr turned to the Rockefeller Foundation , whose “experimental biology” program was designed to improve conditions for the life sciences. Together with Hevesy and the Danish physiologist August Krogh , Bohr applied for support to build a cyclotron —a kind of particle accelerator recently invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in the United States—as a means to pursue biological studies. Although Bohr intended to use the cyclotron primarily for investigations in nuclear physics, it could also produce isotopes of elements involved in organic processes, making it possible in particular to extend the radioactive indicator method, invented and promoted by Hevesy, to biological purposes. In addition to the support from the Rockefeller Foundation, funds for the cyclotron and other equipment for studying the nucleus were also granted to Bohr from Danish sources.

Just as the close connection between theory and experiment had proved fruitful for atomic physics , so now the same connection came to work well in the study of the nucleus. Thus, after the German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in late 1938 had made the unexpected and unexplained experimental discovery that a uranium atom can be split in two approximately equal halves when bombarded with neutrons , a theoretical explanation based on Bohr’s recently proposed theory of the compound nucleus was suggested by two Austrian physicists close to Bohr— Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch ; the explanation was soon confirmed in experiments by Meitner and Frisch at the institute. By that time, at the beginning of 1939, Bohr was in the United States , where a fierce race to confirm experimentally the so-called fission of the nucleus began after the news of the German experiments and their explanation had become known. In the United States, Bohr did pathbreaking work with his younger American colleague John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton University to explain fission theoretically.

Bohr had felt the consequences of the Nazi regime almost as soon as Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, as several of his colleagues there were of Jewish descent and lost their jobs without any prospect of a future in their home country. Bohr used his connections with well-established foundations—as well as the newly set up Danish Committee for the Support of Refugee Intellectual Workers, in which he sat on the executive board from its creation in 1933—to get physicists out of Germany in order for them to spend some time at Bohr’s institute before obtaining permanent appointment elsewhere, most often in the United States.

Niels Bohr: Biography and contributions to atomic energy

Biography of niels bohr, birth and early years, bohr's atomic model, copenhagen institute of theoretical physics, contribution to atomic energy, nobel prize in physics, niels bohr's contributions to atomic models, niels bohr's contributions to nuclear energy, nuclear fision, development of nuclear reactors, legacy and conclusion.

February 8, 2022

100 Years Ago, a Quantum Experiment Explained Why We Don’t Fall through Our Chairs

The basic concept of quantum spin provides an understanding of a vast range of physical phenomena

By Davide Castelvecchi

Otto Stern.

Alamy Stock Photo

The moment I meet Horst Schmidt-Böcking outside the Bockenheimer Warte subway stop just north of the downtown area of Frankfurt, Germany, I know I have come to the right place. After my “Hi, thank you for meeting me,” his very first words are “I love Otto Stern.”

My trip on this prepandemic morning in November 2018 is to visit the place that, precisely a century before February 8, 2022, saw one of the most pivotal events for the nascent quantum physics. Without quite realizing what they were seeing, Stern and his fellow physicist and collaborator Walther Gerlach discovered quantum spin: an eternal rotational motion that is intrinsic to elementary particles and that, when measured, only comes in two possible versions—“up” or “down,” say, or “left” or “right”—with no other options in between.

Before the Roaring Twenties were over, physicists would reveal spin to be the key to understanding an endless range of everyday phenomena, from the structure of the periodic table to the fact that matter is stable—in other words, the fact that we don’t fall through our chair.

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But the reason why I have a personal obsession with the Stern-Gerlach experiment—and why I am here in Frankfurt—is that it provided nothing less than a portal for accessing a hidden layer of reality. As physicist Wolfgang Pauli would explain in 1927, spin is quite unlike other physical concepts such as velocities or electric fields. Like those quantities, the spin of an electron is often portrayed as an arrow, but it is an arrow that does not exist in our three dimensions of space. Instead it is found in a 4-D mathematical entity called a Hilbert space.

Schmidt-Böcking—a semi-retired experimentalist at Goethe University Frankfurt and arguably the world’s foremost expert on Stern’s life and work—is the best guide I could have hoped for. We walk around the block from the station, past the Senckenberg Natural History Museum Frankfurt, to the  Physikalischer Verein , the local physicists’ society, which predates Goethe University Frankfurt’s 1914 founding. In this building, in the wee hours of February 8, 1922, Stern and Gerlach shot a beam of silver atoms through a magnetic field and saw that the beam neatly split into two.

Apparatus used for the Stern-Gerlach experiment in 1922, equipped with modifications made a few years later. The schematic shows a silver beam emerging from an oven (O) and passing through a pinhole (S1) and a rectangular slit (S2). It then enters a magnetic field, whose direction is indicated by the arrow between the two pole pieces (P), and finally reaches a detector plate (A). Credit: “Otto Stern’s Molecular Beam Method and Its Impact on Quantum Physics,” by Bretislav Friedrich and Horst Schmidt-Böcking, in Molecular Beams in Physics and Chemistry . Edited by Bretislav Friedrich and Horst Schmidt-Böcking. Springer, 2021 (CC BY 4.0)

Once we are upstairs in the actual room of the experiment, Schmidt-Böcking explains that the whole experimental setup would have fit on a small desk. A vacuum system , made of custom blown-glass parts and sealed with Ramsay grease, enclosed the contraption. I find it hard to picture that in my mind, though, because the room, now windowless, is taken up by some of the nearby museum’s collections—specifically, cabinets with tiny specimens of bryozoans, invertebrates that form coral-like colonies.

Stern and Gerlach expected the silver atoms in their beam to act like tiny bar magnets and therefore to react to a magnetic field. As the beam shot horizontally, it squeezed through a narrow gap, with one pole of an electromagnet bracketed above and the other below. It exited the magnet and then hit a screen. When the magnetic field was turned off, the beam would just go straight and deposit a faint dot of silver on the screen, directly in line with the exit path of the beam from the magnet. But when the magnet was switched on, each passing atom experienced a vertical force that depended on the angle of its north-south axis. The force would be strongest upward if north pointed straight up, and it would be strongest downward if north pointed down. But the force could also take any value in between, including zero if the atom’s north-south axis was horizontal.

In these circumstances, a magnetic atom that came in at a random angle should have its trajectory deflected by a corresponding random amount, varying along a continuum. As a result, the silver arriving at the screen should have painted a vertical line. At least, that was Stern and Gerlach’s “classical” expectation. But that’s not what happened.

Unlike classical magnets, the atoms were all deflected by the same amount, either upward or downward, thus splitting the beam into two discrete beams rather than spreading it across a vertical line. “When they did the experiment, they must have been shocked,” says Michael Peskin, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University. Like many physicists, Peskin practiced doing the Stern-Gerlach experiment with modern equipment in an undergraduate lab class. “It’s really the most amazing thing,” he recalls. “You turn on the magnet, and you see these two spots appearing.”

Later that day in 2018, I get to see some of the original paraphernalia with my own eyes. Schmidt-Böcking drives me north in Frankfurt to one of the university’s campuses, where he keeps the artifacts inside well-padded boxes in his office. The most impressive piece is a high-vacuum pump— a type invented only a few years before the experiment —that removed stray air molecules using a supersonic jet of heated mercury.

It all looks tremendously fragile, and it is: According to witnesses, when the pieces were used, some glass part or other broke virtually every day. Restarting the experiment then required making repairs and pumping the air out again, which took several days. Unlike in modern experiments, the displacement of the beams was tiny—about 0.2 millimeter—and had to be spotted with a microscope.

At the time, Stern was shocked at the outcome. He had conceived the experiment in 1919 as a challenge to what was then the leading hypothesis for the structure of the atom. Formulated by physicist Niels Bohr and others starting in 1913, it pictured electrons like little planets orbiting the atomic nucleus. Only certain orbits were allowed, and jumping between them seemed to provide an accurate explanation for the quanta of light seen in spectroscopic emissions, at least for the simple case of hydrogen. Stern disliked quanta, and together with his friend Max von Laue, he had pledged that “if this nonsense of Bohr should in the end prove to be right, we will quit physics.”

To test Bohr’s theory, Stern had set about exploring one of its most bizarre predictions, which Bohr himself did not quite believe: that in a magnetic field, atomic orbits can only lie at particular angles. To pursue this experiment, Stern realized that he could look for a magnetic effect of the electron’s orbit. He reasoned that the outermost electron of a silver atom, which according to Bohr is orbiting the nucleus in a circle, is an electric charge in motion, and it should therefore produce magnetism.

In Stern and Gerlach’s experiment, the physicists detected the splitting of the beam, which they saw as confirmation of Bohr’s odd prediction: The atoms got deflected—implying that they were magnetic themselves—and they did so not over a continuum, as in the classical model, but into two separate beams.

It was only after modern quantum mechanics was founded, beginning in 1925, that physicists realized that the silver atom’s magnetism is produced not by the orbit of its outermost electron but by that electron’s intrinsic spin , which makes it act like a tiny bar magnet.Soon after he heard about of Stern and Gerlach’s results, Albert Einstein wrote to the Nobel Foundation to nominate them for a Nobel Prize. But the letter, which Schmidt-Böcking discovered in 2011, was apparently ignored because it nominated other researchers as well, against the foundation’s rules. Stern did not quit the field. Eventually he was one of the most Nobel-nominated physicists in history, and he did get his prize in 1943, while World War II was raging.

Stern’s prize did not honor his work with Gerlach, however. Instead it was awarded for another tour de force experiment in which Stern and a collaborator measured the magnetism of the proton in 1933—shortly before the Nazi regime drove Stern out of Germany because of his Jewish background. That result was the earliest indication that the proton is not an elementary particle: we now know that it is made of three building blocks called quarks. Gerlach never won a Nobel Prize, perhaps because of his participation in the Nazi regime’s attempt to build an atomic bomb.

Today the concept of quantum spin as a 4-D entity is the foundation for all quantum computers. The quantum version of a computer bit, called the qubit, has the same mathematical form as the spin of an electron—whether or not it is in fact encoded in any spinning object. It often is not.

Even so, to this day, physicists continue to argue about how to interpret the experiment. According to now textbook quantum theory, initially, the silver atom’s outer electron does not know which way it is spinning. Instead it starts out in a “quantum superposition” of both states—as if its spin were up and down at the same time. The electron does not decide which way it is spinning—and therefore which of the two beams its atom travels in—even after it has skimmed through the magnet. When it has left the magnet and is hurtling toward the screen, the atom splits into two different, coexisting personas, as if it were in two places at the same time: one moves in an upward trajectory, and the other heads downward. The electron only picks one state when its atom arrives at the screen: the atom’s position can only be measured when it hits the screen toward the top or bottom—in one of the two spots but not both. Others take what they call a more “realist” approach: the electron knew all along where it was going, and the act of measurement is simply a sorting of the two states that happens at the magnet.

A recent prominent experiment seems to lend added credence to the former interpretation . It suggests that the two personas do coexist when the two spin states are separated. Physicist Ron Folman of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and his colleagues re-created the Stern-Gerlach experiment using not individual atoms but a cloud of rubidium atoms. This was cooled to close to absolute zero, which made it act like a single quantum object with its own spin.

The researchers suspended the cloud in a vacuum with a device that can trap atoms and move them around using electric and magnetic fields. Initially, the cloud was in a superposition of spin up and spin down. The team then released it and let it fall by gravity. During its descent, they first applied a magnetic field to separate the atoms into two separate trajectories, according to their spin, just as in the Stern-Gerlach experiment. But unlike in the original experiment, Folman’s team then reversed the process and made the two clouds recombine into one. Their measurements showed that the cloud returned into its initial state. The experiment suggests that the separation was reversible and that quantum superposition persisted after being subject to a magnetic field that separated the two spin orientations.

The experiment goes to the heart of what constitutes a measurement in quantum mechanics. Were the spins in the Stern-Gerlach experiment “measured” by the initial sorting done by the magnet? Or did the measurement occur when the atoms hit the screen—or perhaps when the physicists looked at it? Folman’s work suggests that wherever a measurement happened, the separation was not at the first stage.

The results are unlikely to quell the philosophical diatribes around the meaning of quantum measurement, says David Kaiser, a physicist and historian of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the impact of the Stern-Gerlach experiment remains immense. It led physicists to realize “that there was some internal characteristic of a quantum particle that really doesn’t map on to analogies to things like planets and stars,” Kaiser says.

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• Places - Volga, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus

STAVROPOL KRAI: COSSACKS, MEDICINAL BATHS AND DUELS

Stavropol krai.

Stavropol Krai covers 66,500 square kilometers (25,700 square miles), is home to about 2.7 million people and has a population density of 42 people per square kilometer. About 57 percent of the population live in urban areas. The city of Stavropol is the capital and largest city, with about 400,000 people.Most state-like entities in Russia are oblasts (regions). A krai was a type of geographical administrative division in the Russian Empire and modern hin the U.S.S.R. and is one of the types of the federal subjects of modern Russia. Website: Tourist Information Center of the Stavropol Territory: stavtourism.ru

Stavropol Krai embraces parts of the Kuban River and Kuban steppe and is traditional homeland of the Kuban Cossacks The Caucasus mineral waters resorts of Pyatigorsk, Zheleznovodsk, Yessentuki, and Kislovodsk have been famous since ancient times. Their thermal waters, therapeutic springs and mud have rejuvenated millions of people. Among the first Russians to be treated with these waters were soldiers of the Caucasus line. The first Caucasus mineral sanatorium was built in 1803.

Stavropol Krai has more to offer than Cossacks and health resorts. Archeologists have discovered 20 settlements and towns here, some of which are more than three thousand years old. The traditional life in Stavropol is associated with vine growing and wine making. On the slopes of the Mashuk hill is a modest monument commemorating the duel fought by the writer Mikhail Lermontov.

Stavropol is a land of mountains, ancient fortresses, the first Russian resorts and Cossack villages spread out at the bottom of the former Sarmatian sea. The first Cossacks — Terek and Kuban — settled in the Stavropol region in the second half of the 18th century without the approval of state authorities, as was the way of the Cossacks.

Stavropol means “cross”. The name is explained in different ways. According to one story, a cruciform stone was dug up during the construction of the fortress that would bear the Stavropol name. According to another story, the fortress was marked on a map with a cross to distinguish it from other forts on the Azov-Mozdok line. In any case, an image of the cross is now on Stavropol’s flag and coat of arms.

See Separate Articles: COSSACKS factsanddetails.com ; COSSACK HISTORY factsanddetails.com

Tourism in Stavropol

Accommodation: here are 122 sanatoriums and more than 400 hotels of various levels in Stavropol. A sanatorium course in Yessentuki costs 1672 rubles per day. A single “standard” room at the Hotel “Intourist-Stavropol” goes for 2600 rubles a night. Apartments in Stavropol cost 2000-2300 rubles per day.

Transport in the Region: Buses are the main way of getting around Stavropol krai. To get by bus from Stavropol to Pyatigorsk costs 1100 rubles, to Yessentuki-1350 rubles, to Kislovodsk-1300 rubles (all prices are for one adult round-trip).

Getting There: By Air: : Mineralnye Vody international airport is the main airport in the region. Stavropol Shpakovskoye Airport is located 13 kilometers northeast of Stavropol. If you are heading to the resort, it is preferable to use Mineralnye Vody airport, Many of the of resort the towns are only 30-40 minutes away by car. Flights from Moscow to Mineralnye Vody takes a little more than two hours and tickets start at 4,000 to 7,000 rubles (per adult round-trip).

By Train: Rail links connect some of the resort towns of the Caucasus with destinations in Russia and the former Soviet Union. From Moscow the travel time is about 22 hours The cost of a seat or a berth in a compartment starts at around 5,000s rubles for an adult.

By Car: Motorists have praised the roads of Stavropol are for being smooth, and durable. There are reasonable good links to neighboring regions of the North Caucasus and southern Federal districts.

Kuban Steppe

Kuban Steppe refers to a large are of cultivated steppe in southeastern Russia situated roughly between the Caucasus mountains, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Volga and Don Rivers. It is a rich agricultural area and the traditional home of the Kuban Cossack group. Many people died here during the forced collectivization in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Kuban steppe is one of the major steppes in Europe, located in between the city of Rostov on Don and the Caucasus Mountains. It is named after Kuban River which flows through it. The Kuban flows mostly through Krasnodar Krai for 660 kilometers (410 miles) but also in the Karachay–Cherkess Republic, Stavropol Krai and the Republic of Adygea. The Kuban flows 870 kilometers (540 mi) north and west from its source near Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains, eventually reaching Temryuk Bay in the Sea of Azov.

The Kuabn Steppe is part of the Great Eurasian steppe that stretches from Mongolia and the Great Wall of China in the east to Hungary and the Danube River in the west. It is bounded by the taiga forest of Russia to the north and by desert and mountains to the south. It is located at about same latitude as the American plains and embraces a dozen countries, including Russia, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrzgzstan and several other former Soviet Republics.

Describing the steppes, Polish Nobel laureate Henry Sienkiewicz wrote in With Fire and Sword, "The steppes are wholly desolate and unpeopled yet filled living menace. Silent and still yet seething with hidden violence, peaceful in their immensity yet infinitely dangerous, these boundless spaces were a masterless, untamed country created foe ruthless men who acknowledge no one as their overlord." Steppes are covered mostly by sparse grass or grasses and shrubs such as saxual. Trees are often stunted. Large trunks, branches and leaves require a lot of water to maintain. When the steppes meet the foot foothills, you can find wild poppies, even wild opium poppies.

Stavropol City

Stavropol (430 kilometers southeast of Rostov-on-Don) is a city of 300,000 with historic ruins from the 10th and 11th century as well as a magnificent forest preserve and botanical gardens. Located on a broad plateau, it was used as military supply depot for the Russian military campaigns in Caucasus and is the traditional home of the Kurban Cossacks.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was born in a village of Privolnoe, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Stavropol was educated and rose through the Communist party ranks in Stavropol. Sights include the 19th-century St. Andrew's Cathedral and the Regional Museums, with Cossack uniforms, weapons and memorabilia, and an art museum.

Stavropol began as small fortress on the Azov-Mazdokskoy defensive line built in 1777 on the orders of Catherine the Great the Great to protect the southern borders from attacks of Tatars and Turks and become one of the major political centers of the North Caucasus. Among its early residents were Khoperskaya Cossacks, builders of the fortress’s stone cross.

Stavropol is located on the 45 degree latitude line and is thus equal distance from the North Pole and the Equator. It is said if you make a wish on a clear moonlit night at "Pirogov" and "45 parallel" street your wish will come true. Stavropol is said to be one of the greenest cities in Russia. One of the first thing that strikes visitors is an incredible amount of greenery and flowers found throughout the city. Parks and public gardens are common sights It is said over 800,000 flowering plants are planted annually. The city is home to the largest botanical garden in southern Russia.

Sights in Stavropol

Stavropol is a a historical city, there are more than 200 historical cultural and architectural monuments. Castle Mountain is in the historic center of city. In addition to historical monuments, there is a musical fountain. Nearby is the Memorial Fire Eternal Glory. It has a memorial panel that reads: "We won!" and the names of 10,000 heroes who defended the Motherland during World War II.

In the center of the city is located the Alexander area, or, which locals, call "Angel Square" because of a monument located there. In the old days, the area was home to the largest market in Stavropol, where farmers from neighboring villages came to sell their products. The German bridge was built in tsarist times. The largest archaeological site, Ciscaucasia, lies in an area of old-growth forest near Stavropol.

Stavropol State Circus is housed in a building equipped with a modern theater and circus facilities. It hosts circus performances and well as theater events and concerts. Famous Russian stars such as Philip Kirkorov, Vladimir Kuzmin, Irina Allegrova, Sofia Rotaru, Valeriy Meladze and Tatyana Bulanov have appeared as has the singer Maxim and the group Boney M. The building itself looks like like a UFO.

Tatar Settlement (near Stavropol) is an archaeological site covering an area of about 200 hectares with artifacts and remains from different eras. According to archaeologists, Scythians, Sarmatians, Khazars and other groups lived here consistently from the 8th century B.C. to the 10th century. In the crypts and ruins of the ancient fortress archaeologist have found antique ceramics and household items. According to stories, there are unexplained energy failures: cell phones stop working, compasses show the wrong direction, people lose orientation.

Stavropol Cossack Song and Dance Ensemble

The Stavropol Cossack Song and Dance Ensemble has an international reputation. The history of the ensemble starts with 1981 when choreographer Anatoly Pavlovich Brunilin and musical director, composer Viktor Kamyshnikov combined their talents and recruited leading educators, choreographers, musicians, creative young people and students from Stavropol city schools.

Today the group receives funding from Stavropol Ministry of Culture and employs more than 150 people and is comprised of three main creative groups: orchestra, choir and ballet. Honored Artist of Russia Ivan Gromakov has headed the group since the early 1990s. Stavropol enseemble the only professional creative team in Russia that weaves together folk traditions of the Cossack Kuban groups with traditions from the Don, the Volga, Ukraine, North Caucasus, the Central Russian Plains

The ensemble’s programs are structured to tell dance and song stories of Stavropol’s past and present. Themes and inspiration for the musical and choreographic narrative includes Cossack exercises, violent "duels", training and recruiting. Some works feature weapons with the spirited calls harmonics blows and hot youthful dancing. Others have highland harmonics and incorporate Circassian, Ossetian and Karachay dances. Among the audience favorites are fire dances, Cossack pereplyas, charming stanitsa quadrille dances and games with top-instigators.

Spas of the Central Caucasus

Spas of the Central Caucasus ar located among groups of extinct volcanos located where the Kurban steppes rises into the northern Caucasus mountains. The spas have been visited since the 18th century when the upper classes used them to seek relief from variety of ailments and host balls and seek suitable spouses. Today they are visited mostly by middle class holidaymakers and workers who still have Soviet-era holiday privileges.

Known in Russian as Kavkazskie Mineralnye Vody (Caucasus Mineral waters), the region boasts 130 hot and cold mineral springs and the luxurious spas, elegant hotels, parks, gardens and recreation facilities that accompany them.

There are four main spa towns —Kislovodsk, Yessentuki, Pyatigorsk and Zhelznovodsk, each with its own Intourist hotel — plus the transportation hub and industrial town of Mineralnye Vody. The whole area is associated with Romantic writer Mikhail Lemontov who set some of his stories here and was killed in a duel in Pyatigorsk in 1841. He is regarded as Russia’s second greatest poet after Pushkin.

Generally, each spa is associated with a different ailment. In most cases you are supposed to drink the water rather than bath in it to receive its benefits. In some cases you can walk in off the street and enter a building called an “istochnik” ("spring") and drink the water, but in most cases you need a pass which is only given to those staying at the sanatoria. The most famous spas are Narzan Baths at Kislovodsk and the Lemontov Baths at Pyatigorsk. The spas around Lake Tambukan offer silt mud baths. In Stavropol Krai there are more than 120 sources of natural balneal and drinking mineral water. There are mud springs with therapeutic mud.

Pyatigorsk (160 kilometers southeast of Stavropol) is regarded as the capital of the spa region. Located at an elevation of 550 meters and sitting below 993-meter high Mt. Mashuk and 1,401-meter-high Beshtau, it was founded in 1780 and is home to 110,000 people. Pyatigorsk is a pleasant place full of trees and fine views of mountains. Many of the springs are warm (over 60 degrees C) and have a relatively high sulfur content. There are lots of hiking, skiing and mountaineering opportunities. Horse races are held twice a week and classical music concerts are regularly held.

Activities and attractions include the cable car ride to the conical summit of Mt. Mashuk; the Aeolian Harp preservation point; Lemontov's Grotto, a small cave visited by the writer; the Academic Art Galley,; the Spa Exhibition; and Prival, a cave open to the sky where a couple used to dance on a bridge above a pond. A monument marks the spot where Lermontov died in the duel. The Central Flower Park contains the glass-and-metal Lermontov Gallery, a small artificial cave called Diana's Grotto, an eagle sculpture and Chinese pavilion. Elsewhere in town you can find the Spa Research Institute, the Regional Museum and the Lermontov Statue and Museum.

Eagle Sculpture is a famous symbol of the Caucasus Mineral Waters. The bronze eagle with a snake in its claws represents health-improving qualities of the waters. After having been bitten by the poisonous snake, the dying eagle falls into a mineral spring and is brought back to life.

Aeolian Harp (“Eolova Arfa”): An Aeolian harp (also wind harp) is a musical instrument that is played by the wind. Named for Aeolus, the ancient Greek god of the wind, the traditional Aeolian harp is essentially a wooden box including a sounding board, with strings stretched lengthwise across two bridges. The one in Pyatigorsk was built on Mashuk mountain and has a round arbor with columns. Designed by the Bernardazzi brothers architects at the beginning of the 1830s, the harp consists of a wooden case with two harps and stone floor. Under the influence of a wind the vane rotates and produces musical sounds. Now the Aeolian harp is equipped with an electromusical instrument.

Cossack Farmstead Tourist Ethnographic Center (in the village Borgustanskaya 40 kilometers west of the Stavropol) created with the goal of introducing visitors and locals alike to the Cossack culture, life and traditions. It contains a Cossack hut, watchtower and Cossack fortification. There are also theater performances by folklore groups and workshops featuring Cossack crafts.

Place Associated with Mikhail Lermontov and His Death in a Duel

The famous Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov lived in Pyatigorsk and was killed in a duel there The Lermontov State Museum-reserve was founded in 1912. The Lermontov quarter contains houses preserved in their original form that the poet visited and lived in. The most famous is a house with a reed roof, where Lermontov lived the last two months of his life. Places mentioned Lermontov in his poetry include the “Princess Mary” gazebo “Aeolian harp” on mount Mashuk, Elizabethan spring (the present-day center of resort life), Lermontov Grotto (where the poet painted “View of Pyatigorsk”), Cave “Failure” with the famous lake and the rock on which the “Hero of Our Time” were shot by Grushnitsky and Pechorin and the place where Lermontov and Nikolai Martynov fought their duel. The “Tour of Lermontov places Pyatigorsk” stops at these places.

A monument marks the spot where Lermontov died in the duel with Martynov. After visiting Moscow, on May 9, 1841,Lermontov arrived to Stavropol, introduced himself to general Grabbe and asked for permission to stay in the town. Then, on a whim, he changed his course, found himself in Pyatigorsk and sent his seniors a letter informing them of his having fallen ill. The regiment's special commission recommended him treatment at Mineralnye Vody. What he did instead was embark upon the several weeks” spree. “In the mornings he was writing, but the more he worked, the more need he felt to unwind in the evenings,” Skabichevsky wrote. “I feel I'm left with very little of my life,” the poet confessed to his friend A.Merinsky on July 8, a week before his death.

In Pyatigorsk Lermontov enjoyed himself, feeding on his notoriety of a social misfit, his fame of a poet second only to Pushkin and his success with A Hero of Our Time. Meanwhile, in the same salons his Cadet school friend Nikolai Martynov, dressed as a native Circassian, wore a long sword, affected the manners of a romantic hero not unlike Lermontov's Grushnitsky character. Lermontov teased Martynov mercilessly until the latter couldn't stand it anymore. On July 25, 1841 Martynov challenged his offender to a duel. The fight took place two days later at the foot of Mashuk mountain. Lermontov allegedly made it known that he was going to shoot into the air. Martynov was the first to shoot and he aimed straight into the heart, killing his opponent on the spot. On July 30 Lermontov was buried, without military honours, thousands of people attending the ceremony.

Pyatigorsk Sanatoriums and Resorts

Zori Stavropol Sanatorium is located in the center of Pyatigorsk, near the park Flower Garden in its own landscaped grounds. Pyatigorye Sanatorium is near Lake Failure on the slopes of Mount Mashuk For more than half a century, it has welcomed guests. It has its own well-kept park. Lesnaya Polyana Sanatorium is the largest health resort of Pyatigorsk. It is also known as . Preventive clinic Trade Unions' Center for Regenerative Medicine sanatorium Forest Glade.

Don Sanatorium consists of four dormitories and other buildings, in close proximity to each other: the medical building, catering, club gymnastics hall, a swimming pool with sauna, spas and drinking well-room. Pyatigorskaya Balneogryazelechebnitsa is the largest balneological medical institution in the region. Pyatigorsk Clinic Institute of Spa is located in four-storey building located in the heart of of Pyatigorsk at the foot of Mashuk Mountain, just outside mineral water the pump-room.

Zori Stavropol Sanatorium is housed in single complex of buildings located in the city center, in its own protected landscaped area, where the price corresponds to quality spa services. Sanatorii 'Spread' is located in the center of the spa area in the immediate vicinity of the main sources of drinking mineral water in front and MY house museum Lermontov. The territory borders the medical park. Sanatorium Mashuk Boc has been operating throughout the year for more than a quarter of a century.

Kislovodsk (32 kilometers southeast of Pyatigorsk) is the second most popular spa area in the Caucasus. Located at an elevation of 822 meters, it is higher, greener and cooler than Pyatigorsk and is the birthplace of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. The springs are known for their rich, carbonic waters.Narzan Spring is the most famous. It is housed in a building with a glass dome and Gothic gallery designed by a British architect.

Other attractions include Kurortby park, covering a large area and containing sculptures and exhibitions; the Local Lore Museum, the Culture Museum of Music and Theater; and the Art Museum. Among the hiking destinations are 1,376-meter-high Mt. Maie Sedio and 1,484-meter-high Maly Dzhinal.

Kislovodsk State Circus of Caucasus Mineralnye Vody region is one of main non-spa attractions in the region. The circus has entertained many generations with its magic and produced many circus performers. For many years the circus was under the leadership of Gennady Trakhtenberg.

Ring Mountain is about 900 meters high and is located on the outskirts of Kislovodsk. Over the millennia, winds and rains have eroded an eight-meter-high circular passage through the wall. People like to watch the sunset through this stone ring, which was described by Lermontov. Legends about Ring mountain were told by ancient peoples. It was believed, for example, that a warrior who galloped through the gate in full armor, became invulnerable. Some tourists stand in the arch for good luck.

Museum of AI Solzhenitsyn

Museum of AI Solzhenitsyn honors Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who born in Kislovodsk in 1918 and lived there during his childhood. The museum is housed in a the house of his aunt MZ Gorin, where the writer lived from 1920 to 1924. In 2008, Presidential Decree house recognized the house a a cultural heritage of federal importance and opened in 2014 as the Information and Cultural Center "AI Museum Solzhenitsyn "(ECC" Museum of Solzhenitsyn ").

The Museum of AI Solzhenitsyn hosts interactive programs, literary readings, art festivals and contests. Permanent exhibition center is connected with Stavropol and Solzhenitsyn’s early life. It has materials on the writer’s childhood and adolescence, the tragic events of war, followed by his development as a writer before the publication in 1962, the novel "One Day of Ivan Denisovich", which brought the author international recognition.

The Later life of Solzhenitsyn covers the writer as a prominent figure in diverse multimedia content. There is an information desk. Touch screens, video screens and tablets can be used took at materials, records, Solzhenitsyn works, interviews with the writer, and fragments of documentaries and feature films,

Multimedia form of organization and presentation of information do AI Museum Solzhenitsyn's most modern branch of the GLM, a kind of testing ground in the application and use of the latest museum technologies and information resources. In 2015, the museum planned to create an Astronomical Club in memory of Solzhenitsyn teaching astronomy at school.

Kislovodsk Spas and Sanatoriums

Narzan Baths is perhaps the most famous spa of the Central Caucasus resort area. Part of the complex is housed in a building with a glass dome and Gothic gallery designed by a British architect. Sanatorium Narzan is located in the historic center of the city near the medical park and railway station, It is The main building is one of the most beautiful in Kislovodsk. It was built in 1903 for the 100th anniversary of the resort. The Narzan Gallery is located at the end of Karl Marx Avenue, The interesting historical monument took ten years to build between 1848 and 1858.

Horizon Sanatorium is one of the most comfortable and well-equipped health centers in Kislovodsk. Sanatorium Zarya Russian President Administration is located in the southeastern part of Kislovodsk medical park. Sanatoriy Gina is located in Kislovodsk Dzhinalskogo at the foot of the ridge. Eight-piece housing accommodates 240 visitors. Sanatorium Narzanov is recognized as one of the best resorts for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Sanatorium. Gorky treats patients with diseases of the cardiovascular system, respiratory system, and musculoskeletal system

Sanatorium Fortress was built in the same place, the birthplace of Kislovodsk resort, next to the walls of the fortress, where there is a mineral water source used since in the middle of the nineteenth century. Sanatorium Sunny features European service and high-quality medical services. Sanatorium Samara offers effective treatment for diseases of the cardiovascular system, metabolic disorders, diseases of the respiratory system, the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system.

Sanatorium Victoria is situated in the central part of the Kislovodsk near the Zhelyabovsky pump-room, Sanatorium. GK Ordzhonikidze is part of the Federal Medical Center and Federal Property Management Agency, which also includes Health Hotel Orbita-2, Sanatorium Kolos is located in the historic center of town. There are also several children Sanatoria. Sanatorium Change of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of Kislovodsk is located in the center, a few steps from the spa park.

Yessentuki and Its Sanatoriums

Yessentuki (16 kilometers from Pyatigorsk) is the smallest of the Caucasus spa towns. It is home to 15,000 people and its waters are known for curing digestive and kidney ailments. Worth a look are the Art-Nouveau Muslim-style Tehlmann Sanatorium and the African-style Otsr Robsky Baths

Five Thousand Drinking Gallery Meters at Sanatorium Victoria is the largest drinking gallery in Europe, with 5000 visits per shift and three types of mineral water. Mineral Gallery No. 4 is located in the center of a resort zone of the city.Sanatorium Complex Rus is a respectable new resort complex located in the resort and park area of Yessentuki. Tsanderovskiy Institute Mechanotherapy has been conducting mechanotherapy for more than a hundred years. Medical Center Youth is a Children Sanatorium located in the center of Yessentuki, in close proximity to the park and the therapeutic mineral springs. Sanatorium Source is a new, modern versatile medical-health complex.

Sanatorium Miner is regarded as one of the better resorts of the North Caucasus. Sanatoriy Valley Narzanov is located in the heart of the city. Sanatorium Pearl of the Caucasus is situated in the Upper spa park, near the drinking gallery. Sanatorium Russia is the scientific and clinical branch of the Russian Scientific Center of Medical Rehabilitation and Health Resort Russian Ministry of Health. It offers services for health resort treatment and medical rehabilitation.

Sanatorium Kazakhstan is included in the Medical Center of Administrative Department of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. State Budget Institution of Social Services' Regional socio-health center Caucasus has been functioning since 1996, is located in the southern part of the spa park area of Yessentuki.

Semashko Mud-Treatment Center

Semashko Mud-Treatment Center is regarded a one of the most beautiful spa buildings. It occupies half a block in the center of Yessentuki and is impressive for its austerity and unusual appearance. The greenery of the park that surrounds it provides a perfect background for it rusticated walls made of roughly finished Kislovodsk dolomite. A slender portico with two rows of Ionic columns is accessed ramps guarded by stone lions.

In 1911, the St. Petersburg Society of Architects announced a competition for the design of a mud bath clinic in Yessentuki, The winner — Evgeny Shretter and the Academy of Architecture — received a generous financial reward and created a true architectural masterpiece: a basically classical structure designed to accommodate the, balneology technology of its time.

The clinic started operating in 1915. Although it was constructed long ago, the mud therapy clinic has preserved its traditional functions while incorporating new state-of-the-art equipment. It is now a medical complex with well-coordinated engineering equipment, infrastructure, transfer equipment and facilities, support departments, and the technological process required for mud-bath treatment. The two-storey mud treatment clinic has a basement equipment level and consists of four buildings that have treatment places for 220 patients in 62 booths. The mud treatment clinic, built in the style of Roman baths, now provides treatment for about a thousand people a day.

Visitors can take a guided tour around the mud therapy clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Your guide will tell you about the history of the construction and development of the mud baths. The group visits the rooms, the medical building, the equipment level, and learns about storage and use of Tambukan mud.

Zheleznovodsk and Its Spas and Sanatoriums

Zheleznovodsk (between Kislovodsk and Pyatigorsk) is regarded as the least appealing of Caucasus spa towns. It is home to 70,000 people and is best known for it mud baths.

Sanatorium Health is located in the medical park a 5-minute walk from the city's main sources of water: Slavyanovsky, Smirnovsky, Lermontov. It was founded in 1934. The sanatorium named after the 30th anniversary of the Victory specializes in urological health. It is one of the leading centers in the Caucasus Mineral Waters regions for the diagnosis and treatment urogynaecological diseases.

Sanatorium Mashuk Akva-term is located in the green zone. Sanatoriy Valley Narzanov is located at the foot of Beshtau mountain, five kilometers from Zheleznovodsk. Sanatorium Oak Grove Russian President Administration is a year-round balneological health resort that won a national contest

Mineral Baths of Ostrovsky were built at the end of 1893 and was described as one of the best buildings in Europe at that time. The candy-cane-striped facade of the building is decorated with tall windows with Moorish arches. A wide porch is topped by a colonnade. There are showers and offices equipped with the necessary adaptations. The baths introduced an innovative filling system in which the healing water in the baths was taken directly from wells.

Palace of the Emir of Bukhara

The palace of the Emir of Bukhara (in Zheleznovodsk) is one of the main landmarks of Zheleznovodsk. Its bizarre oriental-style forms give the town a special flair. The dome, minaret, balconies decorated with patterns, ceramics, and intricate carving appear to have emerged from the pages of 1001 Nights. The main entrance to the palace has an elegant stone staircase with several flights of stairs. Sculptures of lions that symbolize the power of the owner. The in Arabic greeting “Peace be upon you, those who enter here” is written on the arch of the palace.

After the defeat of the Emir's army in Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan in 1875, the Bukhara Khanate became a vassal of Russia. The Emir lived in his khanate, in the small town of Kermine, but was listed in the Terek Cossack Army, and was given a high military rank by the Russian tsar. The emir came to the Caucasus regularly for his health, which is why he wanted to build his own summer residence here. The palace in the Moorish style was designed by architect V. N. Semenov.

In 1910, Seid Khan's son, Tyura-Jan-Mirza-Alim Khan, became the Emir of the Bukhara Khanate. He continued the construction of the palace, which he let the tsar's family use in 1913 on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. In 1915, the palace of the Emir of Bukhara was turned into a hospital. After the Emir lost his power and the Soviet authorities took over in1920, all his property was nationalized. The palace was converted into the resort of the Central Administration for Social Insurance. After the war, the sanatorium was named after Comrade Ernst Thalmann, the deceased leader of the German Communist Party. In 1960, the health resort was renamed Udarnik (“Highly efficient worker”), but in the 1970s it once again became a part of the resort named after Thalmann.

The palace has a very sophisticated layout, with many passages, staircases, and corridors. The dome and the minaret feature a spiral staircase crowned with crescents. A prayer space is inside the palace. In its front part, there are richly decorated rooms for audiences, which still have their marvelous ceiling decorations. A huge Art Nouveau style fireplace, decorated with tiles, has also survived to the present day, too. In addition to the main building, there is another building, which housed the harem. It is connected with the palace with a flying wooden bridge.

Ethno Village of Nekrasov Cossacks and the Spiritual Molokans

Ethno Village of Nekrasov Cossacks and the Spiritual Molokans (150 kilometers east of Stavropol) is set up in an area settled by descendants of Nekrasov Cossacks who fled to Turkey after the defeat of the Bulavinsky uprising in 1708 and lived there for and two and a half centuries, preserving the language and traditions, and returned to Russia in 1962. Nekrasovtsy Cossacks are descendants of Don Cossacks rebels led by Kondrat Bulavin in 1707-1709.

Entrance to the ethnic village is 120 rubles for adults, 50 rubles for children. Activities including tea ceremonies, workshops on folk crafts-embroidery, clothing, beading, painting, making clay toys-concerts. The ensemble “Nekrasov Cossacks” performs centuries-old songs and dances. From Stavropol to Nowokunski buses. Fare-1400 rubles (per adult round-trip). Travel time 5 hours. Organizer: "Center of traditional Russian culture Nekrasov Cossacks and spiritual Molokans" (postal address:. 357965, Stavropol Territory, Levokumsky district, Novokumskits, Michurin st, 1B.).

Route "Heirs of Traditions" introduces visitors to the cultural and historical heritage Nekrasov Cossacks and spiritual Christians (Molokans). Tourists visit-Nekrasov Cossacks Museum, Old Believer church and the vineyards and wine cellars at JSC Levokumskij. During a visit to ethnovillage tourists get acquainted with the lifestyle, traditions, rituals, traditional crafts Nekrasov Cossacks and spiritual Molokans. Everyone will be able to try on traditional costumes of the Cossacks and spiritual Molokans, bake bread in a Russian stove, cook traditional dishes:. Threefold, plyaschindu, Kanysh with fist pyshechki etc. Compound spiritual Molokans is famous for its honey shop. Steppe grasses honey is said to be cure for colds and asthma. Visitors will also visit houses now occupied by Nekrasov Cossacks family and spiritual Molokans.

Molokans (from the Russian word for "dairy-eater") are members of various Christian sects that evolved from Eastern Christianity in the East Slavic lands. Their traditions — especially dairy consumption during Christian fasts — do not conform to those of the Russian Orthodox Church, and they were regarded as heretics (sektanty). There are almost as many different customs among Molokans as there are Molokans. Some built chapels for worship, kept sacraments, and revered saints and icons, while others (like Ikonobortsy, "icon-wrestlers") discarded these practices in the pursuit of individual approaches to scripture.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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• Niels Bohr - Banquet speech

Banquet speech

English danish.

Niels Bohr’s speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1922

(Translation)

Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.

In attempting to give expression to my deep and heartfelt gratitude for the great honour that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has bestowed upon me by awarding me the Nobel Prize for Physics for this year, I am naturally forcibly reminded of Alfred Nobel’s insistence upon the international character of science, which indeed forms the very basis of his most munificent bequest. That point of view – the international character of science – suggests itself all the more readily to myself, as the contributions that I may have had the good fortune to make to the development of physical science consist in a combination of the results arrived at by a number of fellow-investigators, belonging to a variety of nations, on the basis of study carried on under widely differing scientific traditions.

The grand discoveries which scientific experiment yielded at and about the turn of the century, in which investigators in many countries took an eminent part and which were destined all unexpectedly to give us a fresh insight into the structure of atoms, were due in the first instance, as all are aware, to the work of the great investigators of the English school, Sir Joseph Thomson and Sir Ernest Rutherford , who have inscribed their names on the tablets of the history of scientific research as distinguished witnesses to the truth that imagination and acumen are capable of penetrating the crowded mass of registered experience and of revealing Nature’s simplicity to our gaze. On the other hand, abstract thinking, which throughout the ages has been one of the most powerful of man’s aids in lifting the veil that shrouds the laws of Nature from the eyes of the uninitiated observer, has proved of the utmost importance for enabling the insight into the structure of atoms so obtained to be applied practically in elucidating the properties of those elements that are immediately accessible to our perceptions. To this branch of the work too, men of many nations have made important contributions; but it was the great German investigators, Planck and Einstein , who, as a result of their systematic abstract investigations, were to show us for the first time that the laws of the movements of atomic particles, which determine the properties of the elements, are of an essentially different character from those laws by the aid of which science has hitherto sought to bring order into the mass of our observations of natural phenomena. If it has been my good fortune to be in some sense a connecting link at one point in the development, that is but one among many evidences of the fruitfulness of the closest relations prevailing in the scientific world between those carrying on investigations under varying human conditions. A Danish scientist, however, on finding himself in Stockholm on such an occasion as this, cannot confine his thoughts to the international character of science but must also dwell in an equal degree on the intellectual solidarity that exists in these Scandinavian countries, of which we are all – and, especially in the domain of science – fully and perfectly aware. It might be tempting to endeavour to indicate the great debt owed by science, and consequently by Danish investigators, to Swedish scientists of earlier and recent times. That, however, would carry me too far, even if I were to confine myself only to the most important of the contributions that we owe to the distinguished representatives of Swedish investigations in natural science who are present here this evening, and whose work in a variety of ways has been of fundamental importance, for instance, for atomic research. Hence I must rest content only to recall the name of one single Swedish physicist, the late Professor Rydberg of Lund, whose brilliant work on the spectral laws has been of such great importance for extending our knowledge of atoms and especially for the particular contribution that it was to fall to my lot to make.

In once more gladly availing myself of this opportunity to express my deep gratitude for the honour that the Academy of Sciences has bestowed upon myself and upon Danish scientific investigation by awarding me the Nobel Prize, I also beg leave at this banquet to propose the toast of International Cooperation for the Advancement of Science, which is, I may say, in these so manifoldly depressing times, one of the bright spots visible in human existence, and also to give you, in particular, Prosperity to the sense of unity and solidarity in scientific work among the peoples of Scandinavia who, notwithstanding the characteristic peculiarities of each, do feel themselves intimately bound together by the ties of racial affinity.

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