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7 November 2022

Three VR Grants to Nordita

Nordita Professor Antti Niemi was awarded a four-year VR project grant "Spontaneous Dynamical Self-Organization".

Nordita Fellow Florian Niedermann was awarded a four-year VR starting grant "Exploration of the Dark Sector with New Microphysics in the Early Universe".

Nordita Assistant Professor Lars Mattsson was awarded a four-year VR project grant "Supernova Induced Processing of Interstellar Dust".

13 May, 2022

In Memoriam Ben Mottelson

9 July 1926 - 13 May 2022

It is with great sadness to inform you that our distinguished professor emeritus Ben Mottelson passed away on Friday, May 13. Ben was an extraordinary physicist and human being in general. He has been a professor at Nordita since it was founded in 1957 in Copenhagen. He has obviously been of immense importance to Nordita and its development for many decades. Our thoughts are his family and friends to process this loss.

Ben was a professor at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) and Nordita, where he was employed for most of his career. With Aage Bohr he developed a unified model of atomic nuclei that could explain many facets of the properties of nuclei. This model combined aspects of Niels Bohr?s liquid drop model with shell effects, and for this work Ben, together with Aage Bohr and James Rainwater, was awarded the Nobel prize in Physics in 1975. Ben had a strong influence on contemporaries in the field, as well as the younger generation of physicists in nuclear and quantum many-body physics. In later years, he turned his attention to metallic clusters, quantum dots and ultracold atomic gases, and also worked with Aage Bohr and Ole Ulfbeck on the foundations of quantum physics.

Ben was the last person still alive that contributed to the foundation of Nordita in 1957, and thus belonging to those that have experienced the very early days of Nordita. Fortunately the book edited by Chris Pethick, Helle Killerich and Ben Mottelson has been completed during 2021 (see nordita.org/scrapbook), in which the first 50 years of Nordita in Copenhagen are described through the contributions of many Nordic people who came in contact with Nordita and shaped the structure of Nordita during the first 50 years of its existence. The presence of Ben Mottelson and Aage Bohr at Nordita was very important for the development of mainly nuclear but also particle physics in the Nordic countries during the sixties and the seventies. They also played a very important role to the high level of the scientific environment in Copenhagen, in which numerous world leading physicist visited the NBI and Nordita for a long period of time.

Nordita is grateful for everything that Ben has meant for the institute and its people.