In 1885, J. J. Balmer, a lecturer in a ladies' college in Switzerland, devised a simple formula relating the wavelengths of the lines in the visible region of the atomic hydrogen spectrum to the natural numbers, and these lines have since been referred to as the Balmer series and have been denoted by H αα , H ββ , H γγ ,...,starting at the long wavelength end.
The model proposed in 1913 by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr (and later further developed by Arnold Sommerfeld) to describe the hydrogen spectrum was of great importance in the historical development of atomic theory. In the simplest form, we could describe a model of an electron moving around a proton in a circular orbit. The Bohr theory has been remarkably successful in calculate the energy levels, wavelengths and series limits for hydrogenlike atoms. Yet it has its limitations.
The levels and lines of many atoms have a hyperfine structure that is detectable only with high resolution, which may require not only interferometry but also a low temperature and low pressure source so that the intrinsic line width is small.
The existence of different isotopes of an element gives rise to what could be called hyperfine structure, except that we are restricting the use of the term hyperfine structure to the splitting caused by nuclear spin. There are two quite different isotope effects, which I refer to as the mass effect and the volume effect.
When a hot gas which is emitting or absorbing spectrum lines is placed in a magnetic field, the lines become split into several components. This is known as the Zeeman effect, discovered in 1896 by the Dutch spectroscopist P. Zeeman.
The Stark effect concerns the separation of the states within a level as the result of the application of an external electric field, and the consequent splitting of lines into Stark components.