Mathematics, experiments, and theoretical physics: The early days of the Sommerfeld school (Q1975254)

Arnold Sommerfeld became famous as the founder of the most influential school of theoretical physics in the early twentieth century. The present paper deals with the beginnings of Sommerfeld's school, its successful achievements as well as its difficulties and setbacks. As he was mainly trained as a mathematician, it was not easy for Sommerfeld to obtain a position in physics at a time when even theoretical physicists were supposed to be excellent experimenters. But contrary to other theoretical physicists, Sommerfeld was always open-minded towards experiments, and when he was offered the chair of theoretical physics in Munich in 1905, he was eager to have an institute with facilities for experimental work. Sommerfeld's success as an academic teacher is partly explained by the fact that, although he refrained from experiments in his own research, he expected that his doctoral candidates would perform experiments along with their theoretical work. Another reason for Sommerfeld's success is the broad range of topics he was able and willing to study, or to offer as problems to be tackled in dissertations. Most physicists know Sommerfeld for his extension of Bohr's atomic model and his explanation of the fine structure of atomic spectra; but he and his students worked as well on problems of basic and applied physics. Consequently those who were trained in his Munich institute not only became professors of theoretical physics (like Pauli and Heisenberg), but eventually had brilliant careers in industry. The article is a pertinent case study of the emerging discipline of theoretical physics during the crucial decades between 1880 and 1920.