Hermann Weyl's Contribution to Physics

In May 1954, at the age of 69, Hermann Weyl gave a lecture1 in Lausanne, as President Ursprung already mentioned. This lecture was largely autobiographical, centering upon various stages of his thinking, especially about philosophy. It touched upon Weyl's first important work in physics:

The next epochal event for me was that I made an important mathematical discovery. It concerned the regularity in the distribution of the eigenfrequencies of a continuous medium, like a membrane, an elastic body, or the electromagnetic ether. The idea was one of many, as they probably come to every young person preoccupied with science but while the others soon burst like soap bubbles, this one led, as a short inspection showed, to the goal. I was myself rather taken aback by it as I had not believed myself capable of anything like it…