Sommerfeld School (original) (raw)

The development of scientific specialties is often related to scientific schools-from a historical perspective as much as from an epistemological vantage point. Quantum mechanics is not exceptional in this regard; its emergence was to a large extent a product of the scientific schools of Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, Max Born in Güttingen and Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich. A school is primarily a locally defined group under the influence of a charismatic teacher. Often this influence results in a common way of thinking, so that the school becomes also a thought collective in an epistemological sense. Not so, however, for Sommerfeld's school. From an epistemological perspective, Sommerfeld pupils like Peter Debye and Werner Heisenberg, for example, hardly belong to a common thought collective. Nevertheless, both are prominent representatives of Sommerfeld's school and contributed decisively to quantum theory.

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  1. Michael Eckert
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, The City College of New York, 138th St. & Convent Ave., New York, NY, 10031, USA
    Daniel Greenberger
  2. Section for the History of Science & Technology, University of Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17, Stuttgart, D-70174, Germany
    Klaus Hentschel
  3. Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Bradford, Bradford, BD7 1DP, UK
    Friedel Weinert

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Eckert, M. (2009). Sommerfeld School. In: Greenberger, D., Hentschel, K., Weinert, F. (eds) Compendium of Quantum Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70626-7\_200

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