Emmy Noether
1882-1935
1898
The Academic Senate of the University of Erlangen officially declared that the admission of women students would overthrow all academic order. Undeterred, Emmy requested permission to audit courses and in 1900 was granted permission from the lecturer to attend. The register of the university shows that in 1900, out of 986 students there were two women.
1903
In the winter she traveled to the prestigious Gottingen university where she attended lectures by world class mathematicians such as Schwartzchild, Minkowski, Klein and Hilbert. The following year she was allowed to take the finishing exam for traditional boys high school in order to become an official student of the university, not just an auditor.
1908
Emmy finishes her thesis under Paul Gordan, On Complete Systems of Invariants for Ternary Biquadratic Forms.
She returned to her hometown doing unpaid research at the university while supervising doctoral students and substituting for her father’s lectures.
1915
Hilbert invites Emmy to join his team at Gottingen, but he was unable to offer her an official position because she was a women.
“I don’t see why the sex of the candidate is relevant - this is after all an academic institute not a bath house”
Emmy continued unpaid work at the university giving lectures under Hilbert’s name from 1916-1919. It was not until 1923 at 41, she was given an official university position with had no salary but came with a small stipend.
1933
As the Nazi party grew in political strength, Jews were forced out of academic positions. Emmy lost her position along with the heads of three of the mathematical institutes at the university, Courant, Frank and Born.
“A stormy time of struggle like this one we spent in Gottingen in the summer of 1933 draws people closely together; thus I have a vivid recollection of these months. Emmy Noether - her courage, her frankness, her unconcern about her own fate, her conciliatory spirt - was in the midst of all the hatred and meanness, despair and sorrow surrounding us, a moral solace.”
Emmy had two choices, an offer from Bryn Mawr to be a visiting professor funded by the Rockefeller Foundation or an offer from Somerville College which came with a stipend and living accommodations.
1935
Emmy gave a weekly course of two hour lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
During this time she underwent surgery, which was followed by a sever infection leading to rapid decline and death.
WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS
Get the rest of their stories in Ladies in the Laboratory? by Mary Creese
Grace Chisholm
When we return to other mathematicians, she got her PhD in Math from Gottengen with Felix Klein in 1895 - she has a great story of the coach driver expecting a young male student and refused to pick her up. Grace was forced to run on foot (in her dress) to the appointments
Mary Winston
Student at Gottengen with Grace Chrisholm
Margaret Maltby
Another Gottengen Student
Ada Lovelace
Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace - pioneer of coding, got into terrible gambling debt, died at 36 of cervical cancer.
Ladies in the Laboratory? by