EMMY NOETHER
EMMY NOETHER BIOGRAPHY
1882-1935
EMMY NOETHER, GENIUS FEMALE MATHEMATICIAN who
was
HAILED by EINSTEIN as a "MATHEMATICAL GENIUS"!
EMMY NOETHER
was born on March 23, 1882 in Erlangen, Germany. Noether's
father was a mathematician. Since girls were not allowed to
study in college prep school, Noether studied arithmetic and
languages at Stadtischen Hoheren Tochterschule. Noether did not
want to be a teacher, but a mathematician. By 1904, women were
accepted at the
University of Erlange, where Noether studied and received a Ph.D, summa
cum laude. She completed her dissertation
"On Complete Systems of Invariants for Ternary Biquadratic
Forms" in 1908.
Emmy Noether lectured and
worked WITHOUT PAY at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen,
where women were NOT allowed on the faculty. In 1915, Noether was invited to
join notable mathematicians Hilbert and Klein
at the Mathematical Institute in Gottingen, where they were
working on a general theory of relativity,
and thought that
Noether's knowledge would be helpful. By 1918, Noether proved
two theorems - one was called "Noether's
Theorem".
By 1922, Noether was hired as
an adjunct professor, but still given a small salary and without
benefits.
Noether's paper on the theory of
ideal rings
in 1921 is considered her most important. It lays the
foundation for modern abstract algebra.
During all this brilliant research, Noether was still unable to
get a proper teaching job at the same level of her male
counterparts at the famed Gottingen University's mathematics
department. She was finally given the position of
unofficial associate professor at the University of Gottingen
In 1932, Noether won the
Alfred Ackermann-Teubner Memorial Prize for Advancement of
Mathematical Knowledge.
In 1933, anti-semitic policies caused Noether to be fired from teaching at Gottingen. Noether was offered a professorship at Bryn Mawr
College in Pennsylvania, which she accepted.
Only 2 years later, Noether had surgery to remove a tumor, which
was successful, but developed an infection and lost
consciousness. Emmy Noether died on April 14, 1935 at the age of
53. That same
year,
Albert Einstein
wrote a letter to
The New York Times,
declaring Noether as
"the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far
produced since the higher education of women began."
Today, some believe that Noether's
Theorem is AS important as Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
