Mathematics, Experiments, and Theoretical Physics: The Early Days of the Sommerfeld School (original) (raw)

Atomic Structure and Spectral Lines.

The names of his students read like a Who’s Who of the pioneers in modern physics Peter Debye, Peter Paul Ewald, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Hans A. Bethe – to name only the most prominent. In retrospect, the success of Sommerfeld’s school of modern theoretical physics tends to overshadow its less glorious beginnings. A century ago, theoretical physics was not yet considered as a distinct discipline. In this article I emphasize more the haphazard beginnings than the later achievements of Sommerfeld’s school, which mirrored the state of theoretical physics before it became an independent discipline.

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Introduction

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  1. Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, der Universität München, Sommerfeld-Edition, Deutsches Museum, D-80306 München, (Germany), e-mail: m.eckert@lrz.uni-muenchen.de, DE
    Michael Eckert

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Eckert, M. Mathematics, Experiments, and Theoretical Physics: The Early Days of the Sommerfeld School.Phys. perspect. 1, 238–252 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/s000160050021

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