Niels Bohr Niels Bohr discovered that electrons travel in seperate orbits around the nucleus. He also discovered that each electron has a fixed amount of energy in it. He said that electrons can move from an orbit of high to low energy. Before his discovery, people believed that electrons were randomly scattered around the atom. He studied the atomic model of Rutherford, who he was working with in England. At that time, he realized that his model had a few mistakes. Rutherford’s model showed that electrons orbited a solar nucleus. He knew this was wrong because if that was true, the electrons would lose energy and collapse. His theory was accepted and he a nobel prize in physics in 1922. His atomic model showed 3 rings that orbit the nucleus. The first ring had 2 electrons, the second ring had 8 electrons, and the third ring had 18 electrons. Bohr did not discover a component of the atom, rather he revised previous discoveries of the electron and improved the theory of the orbits of an electron adding new information about them.