Charles M. Sommerfield was a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at Yale University. He is the namesake of the Bogomol'nyi–Prasad–Sommerfield bound.

Sommerfield studied for his bachelor's at Brooklyn College^[1] and earned his Ph.D. from Julian Schwinger at Harvard University in 1957.^[2] He worked at Berkeley and Harvard for two years each^[3] before becoming professor at Yale in 1961. He was a fellow of Trumbull College.^[4] Additionally, he has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study^[5] and the University of Florida.^[6]

He is notable for his work on high-energy physics. He is one of the namesakes of the Bogomol'nyi–Prasad–Sommerfield bound, along with his graduate student M.K. Prasad.^[7] Another notable graduate student he supervised was Howard Georgi.^[8]

Sommerfield was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1968.^[9]

• Bogomol'nyi–Prasad–Sommerfield state