political and moral issues dr mottelson recalled in an autobiographical sketch for the nobel foundationhe graduated from lyons township high school in la grange ill during world war ii and after joining the navy was sent to purdue university for officers training after graduating with a bachelors degree in 1947 he entered harvard university for postgraduate studies in nuclear physics there he studied under julian schwinger the theoretical physicist who was awarded the nobel in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics with dr schwinger as his thesis adviser dr mottelson obtained his phd in 1950receiving a oneyear sheldon traveling fellowship from harvard he decided to spend the time at the institute for theoretical physics in copenhagen later renamed for niels bohr its founder dr bohr was still working there as was his son aage it was at this time that the collaboration between dr mottelson and the younger dr bohr began in a twist of science the liquid drop model that was eventually made obsolete by the work of drs mottelson rainwater and aage bohr had been proposed by niels bohrwhen the sheldon fellowship ended dr mottelson received a twoyear fellowship from the united states atomic energy commission which allowed him to stay in copenhagen he was then hired by the recently formed european organization for nuclear research known as cern which had been started in copenhagen before it moved to genevawhen the nordic institute for theoretical atomic physics was founded in copenhagen in 1957 dr mottelson was hired there as a professor he stayed there the rest of his professional life with only a brief stint at the university of california berkeley in spring 1959 the institute now called the nordic institute for theoretical physics moved to stockholm in 2007he became a naturalized danish citizen in 1971the theory established by dr mottelson and his colleagues on the shape of atomic nuclei came to be universally accepted but as often happens in science it was initially met with some resistancein his nobel lecture dr mottelson recalled i remember vividly the many lively discussions in these years reflecting the feeling of unease not to say total disbelief of many of our colleagues concerning the simultaneous use of both collective and singleparticle coordinates to describe a system that we all agreed was ultimately built out of the neutrons and protons themselveshe married nancy jane reno in 1948 and had three children with her malcolm daniel and martha she died in 1975 he married britta marger siegumfeldt in 1983 she died in 2014 information on survivors was not immediately available