WORLD OF SCIENCE
Mathematical genius
DR. T. V. PADMA
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Emmy Noether overcame many obstacles to make a mark in the field of mathematics.
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Everyone has heard of Albert Einstein, but unfortunately, not many know of Emmy Noether. She was a Jewish woman mathematician. When she died in 1935, Einstein said, "In the judgement of the most competent living mathematicians, Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began." Emmy was born in Germany in 1882. As a teenager, she was more interested in music and dancing than in mathematics. She studied language, but later, became interested in mathematics.
Hard fight
As a woman, she was unable to find a university that would allow her to take mathematics for credit. So she sat in on classes for two years, and then took the exam that would permit her to be a doctoral student. After five more years of study, she became the second woman to graduate with a higher degree in the field of mathematics.
Emmy wanted to become a professor, but the University of Erlangen had a policy against employing women as professors. As Germany entered WWI, Emmy helped her father (also a mathematician) and conducted her own research and published outstanding papers. A pacifist, Emmy wanted the war to end.
After the war, women were allowed to vote in Germany, but they were still not allowed to teach at institutions of higher learning. German universities that employed her did not pay her well. Her colleagues campaigned strongly for her inclusion. Finally, she was given a job lecturing under her own name, at the University of Goettingen. Her students loved her so much that they called themselves "Noether's boys". But many men felt that males were not meant to be educated "at the feet of a woman".
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