 With his riches, Nernst in 1898 bought the first of the eighteen automobiles he owned during his lifetime and a country estate of more than a five hundred hectares for hunting.He increased the power of his early automobiles by carrying a cylinder of nitrous oxide that he could inject into the carburetor.After eighteen productive years at Göttingen, investigating osmotic pressure and electrochemistry and presenting a theory of how nerves conduct, he moved to Berlin, and was awarded the title "Geheimrat"

In 1905, he proposed his "New Heat Theorem", later known as the Third law of thermodynamics.