On this day the "critical theorist" Wolfgang Pauli sent Gerlach a postcard with congratulations and the remark "Jetzt wird hoffentlich auch der ungläubige Stern von der Richtungsquantelung überzeugt sein" ("Hopefully the disbelieving Stern will now be convinced of the spin-theory").

In 1929, he took a call and became ordinarius professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, successor to Wilhelm Wien.

After 1946, he continued to be an influential official in its successor organization after World War II, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG).

In April of that year, he founded the Reichsberichte für Physik, which were official reports appearing as supplements to the Physikalische Zeitschrift.

[7] From May 1945, Gerlach was interned in France and Belgium by British and American Armed Forces under Operation Alsos.

From 1949 to 1961, he was the vice-president of the Deutsche Gemeinschaft zur Erhaltung und Förderung der Forschung (German Association for the Support and Advancement of Scientific Research); also known in short as the Deutsche Forschungs-Gemeinschaft (DFG), previously the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft.

[7] In 1957, Gerlach was a co-signer of the Göttingen Manifesto, which was against rearming the Federal Republic of Germany with atomic weapons.