Private Lecturer at the University of Munich

Abstract

Up to this point, Max Laue’s academic career had followed a direct course. At Munich, he had become eligible to receive an appointment to a professorship. His chances were good, because there were very few younger theoretical physicists who had studied under various academic teachers and were as versed as Laue in tackling unresolved problems, as his publications demonstrated. Moreover, the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich had a chair in Theoretical Physics. Around 1910 this was not yet the rule at German universities. The leaders in this field were Berlin, Göttingen, and Munich, and Laue’s contributions to the field were well known. The chairholder in theoretical physics at Munich, Arnold Sommerfeld (Fig. 5.1), was an outstanding academic teacher (Eckert 2013: Chap. 6). After completing his studies in mathematics at Göttingen, he had begun his career as an academic teacher at the Mining Academy in Clausthal. He had then followed a call to the polytechnic in Aachen, where he was more of a mathematician—with research on the theory of gyroscopes and contributions to statics—than a physicist (Klein and Sommerfeld 1965). In 1900, at Röntgen’s instigation, he had been appointed to the chair in the field of theoretical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, which had been vacated by Ludwig Boltzmann in order to return home to Vienna. Sommerfeld mainly studied the nature of X-rays and relativity theory. Sommerfeld’s institute had its own workshop and mechanic, which meant experimental research was possible there.