Ben Mottelson (born 9.07.1926) is a Danish theoretical physicist and a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He was born in Chicago. He graduated from Purdue University (1947), in 1950 received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University, and subsequently continued his studies at the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. In 1953-57 he worked at CERN, and from 1957 he has been professor at the Institute of Theoretical Nuclear Physics in Copenhagen (NORDITA).
His research concerned nuclear physics, chiefly the theory of the nucleus. In 1950—52, together with A. Bohr, he developed the generalised (collective) model of the nucleus (Nobel Prize, 1975). He calculated the energies of single-particle states in deformed nuclei. In 1958, with A. Bohr and D. Pines, he constructed the superfluid model of the nucleus.