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Bohr moved to England, failed to impress J. J. Thomas with research on cathode rays but was invited by Ernest Rutherford to conduct postdoctoral research at the University of Manchester
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Rutherford and his collaborators had established experimentally that an atom consists of a heavy positively charged nucleus with substantially lighter negatively charged electrons circling around it at considerable distance. According to classical physics, such a system would be unstable, and Bohr felt compelled to advance this idea. He adapted Rutherford's nuclear structure to Max Planck's quantum theory and so created his Bohr model of the atom.
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In the inauguration speech for his new institute, he stressed, first, that experiments and experimenters were indispensable at an institute for theoretical physics in order to test the statements of the theorists
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While Bohr was being awarded the Nobel Prize for his work, physical chemist Georg Hevesy, together with the physicist Dirk Coster, were working at Bohr’s institute to establish experimentally that the as-yet-undiscovered atomic element 72 would behave as predicted by Bohr’s theory.
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Hevesy and Coster succeeded, proving both the strength of Bohr’s theory and the truth in practice of Bohr’s words at the institute’s inauguration about the important role of experiment.