A new spin on nuclei

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Abstract
The Rotation of quantum objects has a long and distinguished history in physics. In 1912 the Danish scientist Niels Bjerrum was the first to recognize that the rotation of molecules is quantized. In 1938 Edward Teller and John Wheeler observed similar features in the spectra of excited nuclei, and suggested that this was caused by the nucleus rotating. But a more complete explanation had to wait until 1951, when Åage Bohr (the son of Niels) pointed out that rotation was a consequence of the nucleus deforming from its spherical shape. We owe much of our current understanding of nuclear rotation to the work of Bohr and Ben Mottelson, who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics with James Rainwater for developing a model of the nucleus that combined the individual and collective motions of the neutrons and protons inside the nucleus.

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