Niels Bohr’s Designed Coat of Arms

Here is the coat-of-arms designed by Niels Bohr, after he was awarded the Order of the Elephant by the Danish king in 1947: it has a yin-yang symbol and the phrase “contraria sunt complemementa,” which means “opposite things are complementary.” The heraldry speaks well in terms of the discoveries in physics that Bohr undertook in his lifetime (1885-1962). Bohr’s research focused on the “complementarity” of studying things with seemingly opposite properties — the wave- and particle- aspects to sub-atomic particles is a case in point. In the 1930’s, Bohr worked in his native Denmark to assist refugees escaping Nazism — until he himself had to flee when the Germans invaded his country. Britain took him in, and he directed his formidable talents in the war effort. One of Bohr’s quotes that really rings true on many levels goes as follows: “An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”