Arnold Sommerfeld
German physicist (1868-1951) · Germany · Scientists · Died at 82
Arnold Sommerfeld is read about 338 times a day, in 67 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He never won the Nobel Prize, but seven of his students did. Sommerfeld built the quantum scaffold - azimuthal number, magnetic number, fine-structure constant - that others climbed to glory.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
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In their own words 1
, If I knew something about it, I wouldn’t lecture on it!
Awards
In their orbit
About this person
Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld was born on 5 December 1868 in Germany and trained a generation that rewrote physics. He introduced the second quantum number (azimuthal) and the third (magnetic), filling in the architecture of the atom that Bohr had sketched. He gave the world the fine-structure constant and pioneered X-ray wave theory. As doctoral or postdoctoral advisor, he guided seven future Nobel laureates and at least 30 other physicists and chemists who became famous in their own right. He died on 26 April 1951, the teacher who made the revolution possible.
In common with Arnold
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