The History of Mathematics: A Brief Course

3. MODERN EUROPEAN WOMEN 99

Emmy Noether Hermann Weyl

proof of her ability, but it was still short of what she deserved. Hubert's successor in

Gottingen, Hermann Weyl (1885-1955), made this point when wrote her obituary:

When I was called permanently to Gottingen in 1930, I earnestly

tried to obtain from the Ministerium a better position for her,

because I was ashamed to occupy such a preferred position be-

side her, whom I knew to be my superior as a mathematician in

many respects. I did not succeed, nor did an attempt to push

through her election as a member of the Gottinger Gesellschaft

der Wissenschaften. Tradition, prejudice, external considerations,

weighted the balance against her scientific merits and scientific

greatness, by that time denied by no one. In my Gottingen years,

1930-1933, she was without doubt the strongest center of mathe-

matical activity there. [Dick, 1981, p. 169]

To have been recognized by one of the twentieth century's greatest mathemati-

cians as "the strongest center of mathematical activity" at a university that was

second to none in the quality of its research is high praise indeed. It is unfortu-

nate that this recognition was beyond the capability of the Ministerium. The year

1932 was to be the summit of Noether's career. The following year, the advanced

culture of Germany, which had enabled her to develop her talents to their fullest,

turned its back on its own brilliant past and plunged into the nightmare of Nazism.

Despite extraordinary efforts by the greatest scientists on her behalf, Noether was

removed from the position that she had achieved through such a long struggle and

the assistance of great mathematicians. Along with hundreds of other Jewish math-

ematicians, including her friends Richard Courant and Hermann Weyl (who was

not Jewish, but whose wife was), she had to find a new life in a different land. She

accepted a visiting professorship at Bryn Mawr, which allowed her also to lecture