Mottelson, Ben (Roy) (1926- )

US-born Danish physicist who with Aage Bohr and James Rainwater shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on the structure of the atomic nucleus. Mottelson was born in Chicago, Illinois, and educated at Purdue University. Based in Copenhagen from 1950, he was at the Institute of Theoretical Physics to 1953, then held a position at CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research), and became professor at Nordita 1957. In the early 1950s, Mottelson and Bohr together confirmed experimentally the theory worked out by Rainwater about the structure of the nucleus. Mottelson published several books and many scientific papers jointly with Bohr.