Arnold Sommerfeld

Arnold Sommerfeld was a German theoretical physicist, mathematician, and university teacher. He was born in Königsberg in 1868 and died in Munich in 1951 due to accidental death. His professional career included teaching positions at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, RWTH Aachen University, University of Göttingen, and Clausthal University of Technology. He worked in Munich and Aachen, focusing on theoretical physics, mathematical physics, and spectroscopy.

Sommerfeld was educated at the University of Königsberg, where his doctoral advisors were Ferdinand von Lindemann and Felix Klein. He supervised doctoral students including Paul Peter Ewald, Wolfgang Pauli, Gregor Wentzel, and Wojciech Rubinowicz, and taught students such as Linus Pauling, Peter Debye, Hans Bethe, and Alfred Landé. He received the Max Planck Medal, Lorentz Medal, Oersted Medal, and Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics and was a member of the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.