 In May 1927 , Rabi was appointed a Barnard Fellow . This came with a stipend of $ 1 @,@ 500 ( $ 20 @,@ 434 in 2016 dollars ) for the period from September 1927 to June 1928 . He immediately applied for a year 's leave of absence from the City College of New York so he could study in Europe . When this was refused , he resigned . On reaching Zürich , where he hoped to work for Erwin Schrödinger , he met two fellow Americans , Julius Adams Stratton and Linus Pauling . They found that Schrödinger was leaving , as he had been appointed head of the Theoretical Institute at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin . Rabi therefore decided to seek a position with Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich instead . In Munich , he found two more Americans , Howard Percy Robertson and Edward Condon . Sommerfeld accepted Rabi as a postdoctoral student . German physicists Rudolf Peierls and Hans Bethe were also working with Sommerfeld at the time , but the three Americans became especially close . 
