TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index S > Arnold Sommerfeld Quotes

Thumbnail of Arnold Sommerfeld (source)
Arnold Sommerfeld
(5 Dec 1868 - 26 Apr 1951)

German physicist whose atomic model permitted the explanation of fine-structure spectral lines.


Science Quotes by Arnold Sommerfeld (11 quotes)

[Before college] I was almost more interested in literature and history than in the exact sciences; I was equally good in all subjects including the classical languages.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 526. Cited from 'Autobiographische Skizze', Gesammelte Schriften, Vol 4, 673–682.
Science quotes on:  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Classical (49)  |  College (71)  |  Equal (88)  |  Equally (129)  |  Good (906)  |  History (716)  |  Interest (416)  |  Language (308)  |  Literature (116)  |  More (2558)  |  School (227)  |  Subject (543)

After the discovery of spectral analysis no one trained in physics could doubt the problem of the atom would be solved when physicists had learned to understand the language of spectra. So manifold was the enormous amount of material that has been accumulated in sixty years of spectroscopic research that it seemed at first beyond the possibility of disentanglement. An almost greater enlightenment has resulted from the seven years of Röntgen spectroscopy, inasmuch as it has attacked the problem of the atom at its very root, and illuminates the interior. What we are nowadays hearing of the language of spectra is a true 'music of the spheres' in order and harmony that becomes ever more perfect in spite of the manifold variety. The theory of spectral lines will bear the name of Bohr for all time. But yet another name will be permanently associated with it, that of Planck. All integral laws of spectral lines and of atomic theory spring originally from the quantum theory. It is the mysterious organon on which Nature plays her music of the spectra, and according to the rhythm of which she regulates the structure of the atoms and nuclei.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
Atombau und Spektrallinien (1919), viii, Atomic Structure and Spectral Lines, trans. Henry L. Brose (1923), viii.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Amount (153)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Atom (381)  |  Atomic Theory (16)  |  Attack (86)  |  Bear (162)  |  Become (821)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Niels Bohr (55)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Enlightenment (21)  |  First (1302)  |  Greater (288)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Hearing (50)  |  Integral (26)  |  Interior (35)  |  Language (308)  |  Law (913)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Manifold (23)  |  Material (366)  |  More (2558)  |  Music (133)  |  Music Of The Spheres (3)  |  Mysterious (83)  |  Mystery (188)  |  Name (359)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Order (638)  |  Organon (2)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Max Planck (83)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Problem (731)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Theory (67)  |  Regulation (25)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Rhythm (21)  |  Wilhelm Röntgen (8)  |  Root (121)  |  Solution (282)  |  Spectral Analysis (4)  |  Spectral Line (5)  |  Spectroscopy (11)  |  Spectrum (35)  |  Sphere (118)  |  Spite (55)  |  Spring (140)  |  Structure (365)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Time (1911)  |  Train (118)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Variety (138)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)

Although my Aachen colleagues and students at first regarded the “pure mathematician” with suspicion, I soon had the satisfaction of being accepted a useful member not merely in teaching but also engineering practice; thus I was requested to render expert opinions and to participate in the Ingenieurverein [engineering association].
— Arnold Sommerfeld
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 527. Cited from 'Autobiographische Skizze', Gesammelte Schriften, Vol 4, 673–682.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Association (49)  |  Being (1276)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Expert (67)  |  First (1302)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Member (42)  |  Mere (86)  |  Merely (315)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Participate (10)  |  Practice (212)  |  Pure (299)  |  Regard (312)  |  Render (96)  |  Request (7)  |  Satisfaction (76)  |  Soon (187)  |  Student (317)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Useful (260)

Consciously and systematically Klein sought to enthrall me with the problems of mathematical physics, and to win me over to his conception of these problems as developed it in lecture courses in previous years. I have always regarded Klein as my real teacher only in things mathematical, but also in mathematical physics and in my conception of mechanics.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 526. Cited from 'Autobiographische Skizze', Gesammelte Schriften, Vol 4, 673–682.
Science quotes on:  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Conception (160)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Course (413)  |  Develop (278)  |  Felix Klein (15)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Mathematical Physics (12)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physics (564)  |  Problem (731)  |  Real (159)  |  Regard (312)  |  Systematic (58)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Win (53)  |  Year (963)

If I knew something about it, I wouldn’t lecture on it!
— Arnold Sommerfeld
As quoted in David C. Cassidy, Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb (2009), 86. According to Cassidy, this was the response when Sommerfeld was “once asked how he could lecture on a subject he did not understand.” Footnoted as “WH [Werner Heisenberg] to his father, 15 May 1918.”
Science quotes on:  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Lecture (111)  |  Something (718)

If you want to be a physicist, you must do three things—first, study mathematics, second, study more mathematics, and third, do the same.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
Interview with Paul H. Kirkpatrick, in Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists (1978), 200.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  First (1302)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  More (2558)  |  Must (1525)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Study (701)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Want (504)

Mathematics is like childhood diseases. The younger you get it, the better.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
Quoted by Dudley Herschbach in 'Einstein as a Student', collected in Peter Galison (ed.), Gerald James Holton (ed.), Silvan S. Schweber (ed.), Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Srt, and Modern Culture (2008), 236. The remark quoted was footnoted as heard by Dudley Herschbach many years earlier in a class by George Polya, but not found in print.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Child (333)  |  Childhood (42)  |  Disease (340)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Younger (21)  |  Youth (109)

Moreover I can assure you that the misuse word “national” by our rulers has thoroughly broken me of the habit of national feeling that was pronounced in my case. I would now be willing see Germany disappear as a power and merge into a pacified Europe.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 529. Cited from Armin Herman (ed.), Albert Einstein/Arnold Sommerfeld. Briefwechsel: Sechzig Briefe aus dem goldenen Zeitalter der modernen Physik (1968, German), 114-115.
Science quotes on:  |  Assure (16)  |  Broken (56)  |  Case (102)  |  Disappear (84)  |  Europe (50)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Germany (16)  |  Habit (174)  |  Merge (3)  |  Misuse (12)  |  National (29)  |  Power (771)  |  Ruler (21)  |  See (1094)  |  Thorough (40)  |  Thoroughly (67)  |  Willing (44)  |  Word (650)

My father, the practicing physician, … was a passionate collector of natural objects (amber, shells, minerals, beetles, etc.) and a great friend of the natural sciences. … To my energetic and intellectually vigorous mother I owe an infinite debt.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 525. Cited from 'Autobiographische Skizze', Gesammelte Schriften, Vol 4, 673–682.
Science quotes on:  |  Amber (3)  |  Autobiography (58)  |  Beetle (19)  |  Collector (8)  |  Debt (15)  |  Energetic (6)  |  Father (113)  |  Friend (180)  |  Great (1610)  |  Infinite (243)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Mineral (66)  |  Mother (116)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Object (438)  |  Owe (71)  |  Passionate (22)  |  Physician (284)  |  Shell (69)  |  Vigorous (21)

The same applies to the concept of force as does to any other physical concept: Verbal definitions are meaningless; real definitions are given through a measuring process.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
As given in epigraph, without citation, in Eberhard Zeidler and Juergen Quandt (trans.), Nonlinear Functional Analysis and its Applications: IV: Applications to Mathematical Physics (2013), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Concept (242)  |  Definition (238)  |  Force (497)  |  Meaningless (17)  |  Measurement (178)  |  Other (2233)  |  Physical (518)  |  Process (439)  |  Real (159)  |  Through (846)  |  Verbal (10)

Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don’t understand it at all The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to the subject, it doesn't bother you anymore.
— Arnold Sommerfeld
Quoted, without citation, in Stanley W. Angrist and Loren G. Hepler, Order and Chaos: Laws of Energy and Entropy (1967), 215. The authors identify it as “perhaps apocryphal.” The quote is used as epigraph, dated as 1950 in Anton Z. Capri, Quips, Quotes, and Quanta: An Anecdotal History of Physics (2011), 50. The quote is introduced as “When asked why he did not write on that field he replied somewhat as follows,” by Keith J. Laidler in Physical Chemistry with Biological Applications (1978), 145.
Science quotes on:  |  Bother (8)  |  First (1302)  |  Funny (11)  |  Know (1538)  |  Point (584)  |  Subject (543)  |  Thermodynamics (40)  |  Think (1122)  |  Through (846)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Understand (648)



Quotes by others about Arnold Sommerfeld (1)

What I especially admire about you [Arnold Sommerfeld] is the way, at a stamp of your foot, a great number of talented young theorists spring up out of the ground.
As quoted in Paul Forman and Armin Hermann, 'Sommerfeld, Arnold (Johannes Wilhelm)', Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), Vol. 12, 529. Cited from Armin Herman (ed.), Albert Einstein/Arnold Sommerfeld. Briefwechsel: Sechzig Briefe aus dem goldenen Zeitalter der modernen Physik (1968, German), 98.
Science quotes on:  |  Admire (19)  |  Especially (31)  |  Foot (65)  |  Great (1610)  |  Ground (222)  |  Number (710)  |  Spring (140)  |  Stamp (36)  |  Talent (99)  |  Theorist (44)  |  Way (1214)  |  Young (253)


See also:
  • 5 Dec - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Sommerfeld's birth.
  • Arnold Sommerfeld: Science, Life and Turbulent Times, by Michael Eckert. - book suggestion.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.