Margrethe Bohr
(1890-1984)
BIRTH
March 7, 1890
PLACE
Slagelse, Denmark
NAME
Margrethe Nørlund
DEATH
December 21, 1984
PLACE
Copenhagen, Denmark
FAMILY
HOMES
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
RELIGION NOT DOCUMENTED
DENOMINATION NOT DOCUMENTED
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
Margrethe Bohr was the wife and closest collaborator of the physicist Niels Bohr, editing and typing his papers, and was the mother of the Nobel laureate Aage Bohr. Margrethe worked closely with Niels Bohr throughout his career. He dictated many of his papers to her, and she edited and typed them, helping him refine his ideas. The couple had six sons. In 1943 the family fled Nazi-occupied Denmark to Sweden. She died in Copenhagen on December 21, 1984.
EARLY LIFE
Margrethe Nørlund was born on March 7, 1890, in Slagelse, Denmark, the daughter of Alfred Nørlund, a pharmacist, and Emma Holm. Her brother Niels Erik Nørlund became a noted mathematician and, later, director of Denmark's Geodetic Institute. Margrethe trained as a teacher of French at a school in Copenhagen. In 1909 she was introduced to the young physicist Niels Bohr through her brother, who was Bohr's friend and fellow student. The couple became engaged in 1911, while Bohr was completing his doctorate, and they married in Slagelse on August 1, 1912, shortly before he began developing his model of the atom.
Margrethe worked closely with Niels Bohr throughout his career. He dictated many of his papers to her, and she edited and typed them, helping him refine his ideas.
The couple had six sons. Their eldest, Christian, drowned in a boating accident in 1934, and another son died in childhood. Their son Aage later shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975. Margrethe was also the hostess for the many physicists who visited the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen.
In 1943 the family fled Nazi-occupied Denmark to Sweden. After Niels Bohr's death in 1962, she remained a respected figure in Danish science. She died in Copenhagen on December 21, 1984.
CAREER
DEATH
Margrethe Bohr was the wife and closest collaborator of the physicist Niels Bohr, editing and typing his papers, and was the mother of the Nobel laureate Aage Bohr. Margrethe worked closely with Niels Bohr throughout his career. In 1943 the family fled Nazi-occupied Denmark to Sweden. Margrethe was also the hostess for the many physicists who visited the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. After Niels Bohr's death in 1962, she remained a respected figure in Danish science. Margrethe died in Copenhagen at 94 on 21 December 1984. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
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