Woman of the Week – Emmy Noether

Amalie Emmy Noether was a German mathematician, most known for her contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.

She was born in 1882. Her father was a mathematician. She didn’t plan to follow in his footsteps; she originally went to teach French and English. Girls were not allowed to study much other than languages at the time and were encouraged to go into teaching. She was certified to teach in 1900, but decided to take a different path.

She began to study mathematics at the University of Erlagen. Her father taught there and she completed her dissertation in 1907.

She then worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlagen under the supervision of Paul Gordon. She worked without pay there for seven years, as women were mostly excluded from academic positions in an official, and paid, capacity.

In 1915, she went to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen, a world-renowned center of mathematical research, but the faculty objected greatly due to her gender. She spent years lecturing under her advisor David Hilbert’s name as a work around.

In 1919, she was finally approved as an official faculty member, but still without pay. Due to Hilbert and Albert Einstein’s advocacy for her, she was able to start lecturing and she was brought on as an “associate professor without tenure.” Her status never changed and she faced not only gender discrimination but prejudices due to her Jewish, Social Democrat and Pacifist beliefs.

In the 1920s, she began work on abstract algebra. Her discoveries have proven very helpful for physicists and crystallographers, but at the time it was very controversial. The idea of bringing conceptual thinking into a rigid subject like mathematics was not taken well in the field.

In 1928-29, she worked as a visiting professor at the University of Moscow, moving to Frankfurt later on to teach. She traveled to several other universities during this time, lecturing on her work.

In 1933, she was stripped of the right to teach when the Nazis took over. It was very dangerous for her in Germany so she left to take a professorship in the United States. She started at Bryn Mawr College and also guest lectured at Princeton.

Unfortunately, Noether grew very sick and died only two years later in 1935.