Descendant Of “Almost Royalty” Visits Los Alamos To Find the Past

​Barbara Bohr connects with thoughts of her great-grandfather Niels Bohr as she stands on
Sawyer’s Hill where he once skied during the Manhattan Project. (Photo by Liz Martineau)

By Sharon Snyder
Los Alamos Historical Society

In mid August, the historical society was contacted by a young woman who wanted to
visit Los Alamos to see where her ancestors had been during the Manhattan Project. She
would be flying from Denmark and wanted to learn what might still be here from that era.
While there aren’t many buildings in existence on the community side of the fence, there
is still an aura of that time, those years in the mid-1940s when scientists came together
from many parts of the world to focus on a singular goal.

Flash forward to this past Thursday. The woman stood inside the Hans Bethe House,
looking at the panels that show the names of Nobel Prize winners connected with Los
Alamos. It must have been a moment of pride for her because Barbara Bohr has two
family members shown on those panels—her great grandfather Niels Bohr and her
grandfather Aage Bohr.

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