Arnold Sommerfeld

Claimed by Brenan Wayland 12/5/15 6:16 PM

PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS PAGE. COPY THIS TEMPLATE AND PASTE IT INTO A NEW PAGE FOR YOUR TOPIC.

Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld was a German theoretical physicist and renowned mentor of fellow physicists (he has supervised the greatest number of Nobel prize winners of any other supervisor). His notable achievements include the introduction of the 2nd and 4th quantum number, as well as x-ray wave theory.

Arnold's Life

State, in your own words, the main idea for this topic

Early Life

Arnold was born to Cacille Matthis and Franz Sommerfeld. The latter was a medical doctor from a prominent Königsberg family. They both fostered an intellectually curious environment for young Arnold, to which he attributes his similar zeal for the sciences.

He excelled in school, attending the Altstädtisches Gymnasium in Königsberg (notable peers include Hermann Minkowski, who would go on to introduce "Minkowski space-time", a geometrical representation of his former student Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, and Wilhelm Wien, a Nobel prize winning physicist). Arnold wasn't drawn to the sciences initially, in fact, preferring the humanities. Even so, he went on to study mathematics at the Albertina University in Königsberg.

Notable Teachers

While in university, Arnold was inspired and influenced by the esteemed staff of the mathematics department: David Hilbert, Adolf Hurwitz, and Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann. Hilbert proved to be especially influential, as it was his course on the theory of ideal numbers that convinced Arnold to pursue abstract mathematics. In fact, despite there being a renowned school of Theoretical Physics, Arnold did not study physics. The quality of the university's teaching staff and his involvement with the Burschenschaft resulted in Arnold staying in Königsberg

Professional Career

How do we visualize or predict using this topic. Consider embedding some vpython code here Teach hands-on with GlowScript

Concepts

Be sure to show all steps in your solution and include diagrams whenever possible

Connectedness

1. How is this topic connected to something that you are interested in?
2. How is it connected to your major?
3. Is there an interesting industrial application?

See also

Are there related topics or categories in this wiki resource for the curious reader to explore? How does this topic fit into that context?

Further reading

Books, Articles or other print media on this topic

External links

[1]

References

This section contains the the references you used while writing this page