March 27th, 2016: Emmy Noether

[xoxoxoBruce]

Do you remember Margret Hamilton and Elizebeth Friedman? Here I go again.

Amalie Emmy Noether was born in 1882 in Erlangen, Germany.
Her Father, Max Noether, a math professor at the University of Erlangen.

Despite this fertile background, it wasn't obvious that Emmy could become a mathematician, too. German universities rarely accepted female students at the time. She had to beg the faculty at Erlangen to let her audit math courses. It was only after she dominated her exams that the school relented, giving her a degree and letting her pursue graduate studies.

OK, so once she absorbed all this book learnin’, knew what all the smart guys had figured out, what next?
Most do research, trying to figure out some new stuff, becoming one of the smart guys.
In a short time she came up with her own new stuff in algebra, which impressed some people.
But there’s that niggling little matter of food and shelter.

Her work got noticed, and in 1915, the renowned mathematician David Hilbert lobbied for the University of Göttingen to hire her. But other male faculty members blocked the move, with one arguing: "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" So Hilbert had to take Noether on as a guest lecturer for four years. She wasn't paid, and her lectures were often billed under Hilbert's name. She didn't get a full-time position until 1919.

Despite all this drama she did a lot of work, made a number of breakthroughs, and even grabbed the brass ring, “Noether's theorems”.
But she was not only a woman, she was a Jew, so when Hitler took over in 1932, she got the hell out of Dodge, to teach at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
She died in 1935 after surgery… probably a German Doctor.

Mathematicians and Physicists made great strides based on her work, Chen Ning Yanng, Robert Mills, Murray Gell-Mann and the famous Peter Higgs.
Albert Einstein wrote;

In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fraeulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger generation of mathematicians.

Et tu Albert? "since higher education of women began"? For a chick, Albert?

Today, Emmy Noether remains relatively unknown outside of math circles. In 2012, physicist David Goldberg told the New York Times that most of his colleagues and students had never heard of her: "Surprisingly few could say exactly who she was or why she was important."

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