In 1951, he completed his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in physics with Friedrich Bopp (Fritz) with a dissertation on a quantum mechanics problem posed by Arnold Sommerfeld related to unipolar induction.
[2] Samelson became interested in numerical analysis, and when Hans Piloty, an electrical engineer, and Robert Sauer, a professor of mathematics, began working together, he joined and got involved in early computers as a research associate in the Mathematical Institute of the Technical University of Munich.
His first publications came from Sauer's interests dealing with supersonic speed flow and precision problems of digital computations for numerical calculations of eigenvalues.
With Friedrich L. Bauer, who also had Fritz Bopp as his Ph.D. advisor, he studied the structure of programming languages to develop efficient algorithms for their translation and implementation.
Piloty, Bauer and Samelson had also worked on the design of PERM, a computer based partly on the Whirlwind I concept.