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Emmy Noether materials

 Collection
Identifier: BMC.2012-15

Scope and Contents

The collection consists mainly of material written about Noether and memorializing Noether. Original material is limited to a collection of letters and postcards written to Richard Brauer at the University of Kentucky, 1927-1933 as well as correspondence by and about Noether with Bryn Mawr College. The Special Collections Department also maintains a collection of reprinted material from various journals that Noether collected and used.

Dates

  • Creation: 1885 - 1935
  • Creation: Majority of material found within 1920 - 1935

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

The Emmy Noether materials are the physical property of Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns.

Biographical / Historical

Emmy Noether was born in Wilhemine Nuremberg, Germany and raised the daughter of mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Erlangen, Max Noether. At the age of eighteen she decided to pursue a career in mathematics and began auditing her father's classes. In 1907 she received a doctorate in mathematics, which made her the second woman in history to receive a doctorate degree from a German University. Since women were still not allowed to teach at the university level in Germany, after receiving her degree Noether worked at the University of Erlangen for eight years as an unpaid supervisor of doctoral students and as an occasional lecturer.

Noether was then invited to Gottingen University to write and deliver a paper on the General Relativity theory. She was well received by colleagues Felix Kline, David Hilbert and Albert Einstein. In the second year of the First World War there was an attempt to put Noether on the faculty of mathematics at Gottingen University. The attempt was unsuccessful, though David Hilbert, her strongest advocate and close friend, circumvented the institution's rejection of Noether by setting up lecture courses in his name but allowing Noether to teach them. In 1919 Noether started teaching at Gottingen in her own right and in 1922 her position at the University became salaried. In the spring of 1933, with the rise of the Nazi party to power in Germany, Noether, then fifty-one, faced persecution as a woman academic and as an anti-Nazi Jew. She left Germany for the United States and a teaching job at Bryn Mawr College. During the 1934-1935 academic year Noether taught one graduate level course in Algebra in the department of mathematics. Noether died suddenly in 1935 at the Bryn Mawr Hospital. She was cremated and her ashes were buried beneath a memorial stone in the Cloisters of Bryn Mawr College. She was eulogized by colleague Albert Einstein in the New York Times following her death. Noether is today considered the most influential female mathematician of the twentieth century.

Extent

1 linear ft.

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

Born in Germany, Emmy Noether was a distinguished mathematician who immigrated to the United States as a refugee Jewish scholar in the 1930s where she took a teaching position at Bryn Mawr College. During the 1934-1935 academic year Noether taught one graduate level course in Algebra in the department of mathematics. Noether died suddenly in 1935 at the Bryn Mawr Hospital. The collection consists mainly of material written about Noether and memorializing Noether.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Varied Sources

Subject

Title
Emmy Noether materials
Status
Completed
Author
Lorett Treese, Melissa Torquato
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Find It at the Library

Most of the materials in this catalog are not digitized and can only be accessed in person. Please see our website for more information about visiting or requesting repoductions from Bryn Mawr College Library

Contact:
Bryn Mawr College Library
101 N. Merion Avenue
Bryn Mawr 19010 USA US
610-526-6576