...Four of Sommerfeld's doctoral students,[21] Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Peter Debye, and Hans Bethe went on to win Nobel Prizes, while others, most notably, Walter Heitler, Rudolf Peierls,[22] Karl Bechert, Hermann Brück, Paul Peter Ewald, Eugene Feenberg,[23] Herbert Fröhlich, Erwin Fues, Ernst Guillemin, Helmut Hönl, Ludwig Hopf, Adolf Kratzer, Otto Laporte, Wilhelm Lenz, Karl Meissner,[24] Rudolf Seeliger, Ernst C. Stückelberg, Heinrich Welker, Gregor Wentzel, Alfred Landé, and Léon Brillouin[25] became famous in their own right. Three of Sommerfeld's postdoctoral supervisees, Linus Pauling,[26] Isidor I. Rabi[27] and Max von Laue,[28] won Nobel Prizes, and ten others, William Allis,[29] Edward Condon,[30] Carl Eckart,[31] Edwin C. Kemble,[32] William V. Houston,[33] Karl Herzfeld,[34] Walther Kossel, Philip M. Morse,[35][36] Howard Robertson,[37] and Wojciech Rubinowicz[38] went on to become famous in their own right. Walter Rogowski, an undergraduate student of Sommerfeld at RWTH Aachen, also went on to become famous in his own right. Max Born believed Sommerfeld's abilities included the "discovery and development of talents".[39] Albert Einstein told Sommerfeld: "What I especially admire about you is that you have, as it were, pounded out of the soil such a large number of young talents."[39] Sommerfeld's style as a professor and institute director did not put distance between him and his colleagues and students. He invited collaboration from them, and their ideas often influenced his own views in physics. He entertained them in his home and met with them in cafes before and after seminars and colloquia. Sommerfeld owned an alpine ski hut to which students were often invited for discussions of physics as demanding as the sport.[40]

While at Munich, Sommerfeld came in contact with the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein, which was not yet widely accepted. His mathematical contributions to the theory helped its acceptance by the skeptics. In 1914 he worked with Léon Brillouin on the propagation of electromagnetic waves in dispersive media...

All he could do was use the friendships he had built up during a one-year stay in the United States and a one-year round-the-world trip to help place the refugees. The loss of so many of its best men in this way together with World War II, destroyed the scientific strength of Germany, and Sommerfeld felt obliged to continue teaching until 1947, long after the usual retirement age of 65. His life was ended by another tragedy. Somewhat deaf in his old age he failed to hear a warning [when out walking with his grandchildren] and was struck by a truck in the spring of 1951. He died of the injuries two months later.