- Person
- Emmy Noether
- Lived
- 1882–1935
- Field
- Mathematics
- From
- German
The story
When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, Nazi activity spread rapidly through German universities. At Göttingen the German Student Association led an attack on the supposed "un-German spirit" of Jewish scholars, helped by one of Noether's own former students. One of the regime's first measures, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933, removed Jews and political opponents from public posts, including university chairs.
In April 1933 Noether, a Jewish woman with left-wing sympathies, received a notice from the Prussian ministry withdrawing her right to teach at the University of Göttingen. Several colleagues, including Max Born and Richard Courant, also lost their posts. She received no pension or compensation. Yet in a letter to Helmut Hasse on 10 May 1933 she wrote that the blow was much less terrible for her than for many others, since a small inheritance would let her wait and see.
She met the crisis with remarkable calm and kept supporting others. Typically, she stayed focused on mathematics, inviting students into her apartment to discuss their plans and mathematical ideas, including class field theory. When one of her students turned up in the uniform of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary, she showed no sign of agitation and reportedly even laughed about it later. One of her students, Wolfgang Wichmann, supported an unsuccessful student initiative to have her dismissal revoked.
Her colleague Hermann Weyl later recalled that her courage, frankness, unconcern for her own fate and conciliatory spirit were a moral comfort amid the hatred and despair of that time. In his address at her funeral he remembered that she seemed unable to believe in evil, and that she welcomed every student, whatever their politics, as she continued to think about mathematics with the same energy as before.
Noether was offered help by Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and by Somerville College, Oxford. After negotiations with the Rockefeller Foundation, a grant to Bryn Mawr was approved, and in October 1933 she sailed for the United States. There she led a seminar for a group of women students and young scholars, and from February 1934 she gave weekly lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She kept teaching until her sudden death in April 1935, leaving an example of intellectual courage and devotion to students that is still remembered.
Why it matters
Noether's steadiness under persecution became an enduring example of intellectual courage and devotion to teaching.
About Emmy Noether
Erlangen-born mathematician who linked symmetry to conservation laws and reshaped abstract algebra, despite years of unpaid work as a woman and dismissal by the Nazis as a Jew.
More about Emmy Noether
- Emmy Noether's bound solved a problem in invariant theoryIn 1915 Emmy Noether solved the finite basis problem for finite groups, proving a degree limit now called Noether's bound. A last open case was settled only in 2000 and 2001.
- Emmy Noether helped classify division algebrasWith Richard Brauer and Helmut Hasse, Emmy Noether proved the Brauer–Hasse–Noether theorem, which allows all central division algebras over a number field to be classified.
- Emmy Noether helped create algebraic topologyAttending lectures by Pavel Alexandrov and Heinz Hopf in 1926–27, Emmy Noether suggested the idea of homology groups, helping turn combinatorial topology into algebraic topology.
- Emmy Noether's 1921 paper gave us Noetherian ringsIn her 1921 paper Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen, Emmy Noether turned the theory of ideals into a powerful general tool, and objects with her chain condition are still called Noetherian.
- Emmy Noether built a school of brilliant studentsEmmy Noether's Göttingen circle, the Noether boys, included doctoral students such as Grete Hermann, Ernst Witt, Max Deuring and Jacob Levitzki, who later taught in Jerusalem.
- Emmy Noether linked symmetry to the laws of conservationIn 1918 Emmy Noether proved that every continuous symmetry in physics comes with a conserved quantity, tying conservation of energy and momentum to symmetry.
- Emmy Noether unified group representation theoryEmmy Noether gave the first general representation theory of groups and algebras, combining scattered earlier results into a single theory of modules and ideals.
- Emmy Noether worked seven years without payOne of only two women among 986 students at Erlangen, Emmy Noether earned her doctorate in 1907 and then worked at the university's Mathematical Institute for seven years without pay.
Sources
- Emmy Noether Wikipedia
- Emmy Amalie Noether MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews
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