Niels Erik Nørlund, 26 October 1885 - 4 July 1981
Niels Erik Nørlund was born on 26 October 1885, the son of Alfred Nørlund, the licentiate of the pharmacy in Slagelse, a town in western Sealand. In this rather well-to-do home he grew up with his younger sister Margrethe and younger brother Poul. They formed a trio that later attained a prominent p...
| Published in: | Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
1983
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1983.0017 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.1983.0017 |
| Summary: | Niels Erik Nørlund was born on 26 October 1885, the son of Alfred Nørlund, the licentiate of the pharmacy in Slagelse, a town in western Sealand. In this rather well-to-do home he grew up with his younger sister Margrethe and younger brother Poul. They formed a trio that later attained a prominent position in the scientific and scholarly life of Denmark; Margrethe married the physicist Niels Bohr in 1912 and became a brilliant hostess for scientists from all over the world in Bohr’s honorary residence at Carlsberg, while Poul, later director of the Nationalmuseum in Copenhagen, became well known for his excavations of Norse ruins in Greenland and of the Viking fortress at Trelleborg. After attending the elementary school in his native town, Nørlund went to the old renowned public school Søro Akademi in the neighbouring town of Søro. His favourite subjects were astronomy and mathematics, and when in 1903 he had finished school and left for Copenhagen University it was obvious that these should be his field of study. However, he had difficulty in deciding which of the subjects he preferred, and he therefore followed them both simultaneously. |
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