J. Hans D. Jensen

German nuclear physicist (1907–1973)

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Lived 1907–1973, aged 66Germany

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75 languages
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Era
1907–1973
Aged 66
Awards
2
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

A German theoretical physicist who cracked the architecture of the atomic nucleus — why protons and neutrons arrange themselves in shells like electrons do — and shared the 1963 Nobel for a model that rewrote nuclear theory.

Biography

About

Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen was born 25 June 1907 in Germany. During World War II he worked on the Uranium Club, the German nuclear energy project, contributing to uranium isotope separation. After the war he took a professorship at the University of Heidelberg and rotated through visiting posts at Wisconsin–Madison, the Institute for Advanced Study, Berkeley, Indiana, and Caltech. His work on nuclear shell structure — the discovery that nucleons occupy discrete energy levels in ways that explain nuclear stability and magic numbers — earned him half the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with…

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