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A Refugee Scholar from Nazi Germany: Emmy Noether and Bryn Mawr College

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Notes

  1. Lorraine Boissoneault, “The Forgotten Women Scientists Who Fled the Holocaust for the United States: A New Project from Northeastern University Traces the Journeys of 80 Women who Attempted to Escape Europe and Find New Lives in America during World War II.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/forgotten-women-scientists-who-fled-holocaust-united-states-180967166/. See also the Northeastern University team project “Rediscovering the Refugee Scholars of the Nazi Era.” https://www.northeastern.edu/refugeescholars/home.

  2. Miriam Intrator, “Jewish Refugee Scholars in America: Some European Academics Escaped to America before the Holocaust.” https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-refugee-scholars-in-america/.

  3. See, for example, Auguste Dick, Emmy Noether, 1882–1935, translated by H. I. Blocher, Boston: Birkhäuser (1981); James W. Brewer and Martha K. Smith, eds., Emmy Noether: A Tribute to Her Life and Work, New York and Basel: Marcel Dekker (1981); and Margaret B. W. Tent, Emmy Noether: The Mother of Modern Algebra, Natick, MA: A K Peters, Ltd. (2008).

  4. Many efforts have of course already been made in this regard. See, for example, Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact, Princeton University Press (2009); Mitchell G. Ash and Alfons Söllner, eds., Forced Migration and Scientific Change: Émigré German-Speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933, Cambridge University Press (1996); Catherine Epstein, A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933, Cambridge University Press (1993); Richard Bodek, et al. The Fruits of Exile: Central European Intellectual Immigration to America in the Age of Fascism, University of South Carolina Press (2010). The Mathematical Intelligencer has also published a number of related articles, for example, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2015) is largely the proceedings of the symposium Turmoil and Transition: Tracing Émigré Mathematicians in the Twentieth Century, which was held at New York University on October 1, 2013, on the opening of the major international exhibition Transcending Tradition: Jewish Mathematicians in German-Speaking Academic Culture; see Moritz Epple, “An Introduction to the Exhibition,” Mathematical Intelligencer 37:1 (2015), 5–9; see also the review of the exhibition catalogue by Marjorie Senechal in Notices of the AMS (February 2013) 209–213. Reinhardt Siegmund-Schultze’s article about the Rockefeller program, “Rockefeller Philanthropy and Mathematical Emigration between World Wars,” Mathematical Intelligencer 37:1 (2015), 10–19, could be read together with my article.

  5. The Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars, Livingston Farrand, chairman; Fred M. Stein, treasurer; Stephen Duggan, secretary. Bryn Mawr Special Collections.

  6. The Emergency Committee. Report of June 1, 1941, by Stephen Duggan.

  7. Utz Maas, Verfolgung und Auswanderung deutschsprachiger Sprachforscher 1933–1945, Osnabrück: Secolo Verlag (1996) 36.

  8. See 3H Noether, Emmy. Correspondence, President’s Office, about E. Noether 1933–1935, Bryn Mawr Special Collections.

  9. Dick, 96.

  10. “A Mathematician Almost Forgotten by His Country—[Chiungtze C. Tsen 曾炯之]” (一个几乎被国人遗忘的数学家) by an anonymous visiting scholar (July 9, 2006). http://bbs.creaders.net/education/bbsviewer.php?trd_id=172291&language=big5.

  11. Dick, 75; Tent, 143–146.

  12. “Die Noether—Gutachten,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, last updated on February 28, 2007, 7–29. https://www.mathi.uni-heidelberg.de/~roquette/Transkriptionen/DOKNOE_070228.pdf.

  13. “Der Kurator an den Minister, 7.8.1933,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 13.

  14. Hermann Weyl, “Emmy Noether: Memorial Address.” In Dick, 112–152, here 132–133; Franz Lemmermeyer and Peter Roquette, eds., Helmut Hasse und Emmy Noether: Die Korrespondenz, 1925–1935, Universitätsverlag Göttingen (2006) 191, n 7.

  15. Lemmermeyer and Roquette, 204; “Emmy Noether’s Paradise: How IAS Helped Support the First Female Professor in Germany When She Became a Displaced Refugee,” by History Working Group, 2017. https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2017/emmy-noether%E2%80%99s-paradise.

  16. Quoted from Kimberling, “Emmy Noether and Her Influence,” In Brewer and Smith, 3–61, here 30. There were additional personal ties between Princeton and Bryn Mawr. Abraham Flexner’s sister, Mary Flexner, attended Bryn Mawr with his financial support. Abraham Flexner’s brother, Simon Flexner, was married to M. Carey Thomas’s sister, Helen. M. Carey. Thomas was the first dean and second president of Bryn Mawr College. Simon Flexner was the first director of the Rockefeller Institute in New York. See “Abraham Flexner: Life.” https://www.ias.edu/flexner-life; “Abraham Flexner.” The Rockefeller Foundation: A Digital History. https://rockfound.rockarch.org/biographical/-/asset_publisher/6ygcKECNI1nb/content/abraham-flexner?; Alice Digilio, “A Philadelphia Love Story,” The Washington Post, February 19, 1984. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1984/02/19/a-philadelphia-love-story/41b5db3d-f8d4-4076-9946-a17b32d6dc50/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.251b416ce621.

  17. See P. S. Alexandrov, “In Memory of Emmy Noether.” In Dick, 153–179, here 176.

  18. Tent, 145.

  19. Tent, 155.

  20. The archival file contains the original letter in German along with the English translation reproduced here. See President’s Office, about E. Noether.

  21. Lemmermeyer and Roquette, 199; my translation.

  22. The archival file contains the original letter in German along with the English translation reproduced here. See Noether, Emmy Transcriptions + Translations to English of Letter to R Brauer, Bryn Mawr Special Collections.

  23. Kimberling, “Emmy Noether and Her Influence,” 30–31, citing a log submitted by Professor H. M. Miller to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Paris office, dated September 25, 1933. According to Margaret Rainer, Oxford offered little support to refugee mathematicians from Germany during the 1930 s: “While several other universities saw the opportunity to assist refugees while bolstering their own academic profile … nothing happened at Oxford beyond abortive negotiations for the great algebraist Emmy Noether to come to Somerville College on her dismissal from Göttingen.” Rainer, “The 20th Century,” in John Fauvel, Raymond Flood, and Robin Wilson, eds., Oxford Figures: Eight Centuries of the Mathematical Sciences, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press (2013) 315.

  24. Tent, 146–147.

  25. See All Convocation Addresses by President Park, 1922–1942, Bryn Mawr Special Collections.

  26. Kimberling noted that after a flurry of correspondence, Warren Weaver, then director of the Division of Natural Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, wrote to assure President Park that “the Foundation may be counted on to contribute the sum of $2,000 toward the salary of Prof. Noether at Bryn Mawr during the academic year 1934–1935,” i.e., a second year of financial commitment from the Rockefeller Foundation toward Noether’s salary. See Kimberling, “Emmy Noether and Her Influence,” 31.

  27. Letter from Park to J. David Stern at the Philadelphia Record, November 7, 1933. See President’s Office, about E. Noether.

  28. Letter to Dr. Weaver at the Rockefeller Foundation on November 28, 1933. See President’s Office, about E. Noether.

  29. Tent, 148.

  30. Lemmermeyer and Roquette, 204.

  31. “21.06.1934, Noether an Hasse,” Lemmermeyer and Roquette, 75.

  32. Tent, 152–153.

  33. Tent, 153.

  34. Tent, 147.

  35. Grace S. Quinn, Ruth S. McKee, Marguerite Lehr, and Olga Taussky, “Emmy Noether in Bryn Mawr,” in Bhama Srinivasan, and Judith D. Sally, eds., Emmy Noether in Bryn Mawr: Proceedings of a Symposium Sponsored by the Association for Women in Mathematics in Honor of Emmy Noether’s 100th Birthday. New York: Springer Verlag (1983) 138–146, here 140.

  36. Clark H. Kimberling, “Emmy Noether,” The American Mathematical Monthly 79:2 (1972), 136–149, here 148.

  37. Kimberling, “Emmy Noether,” 148; “18.04.1935, M. Lehr über E. Noether,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 47–48.

  38. “13.12.1934, Veblen an A. Flexner,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 78.

  39. “13.12.1934, Veblen an A. Flexner,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 78.

  40. See President’s Office, about E. Noether.

  41. “21.02.1935, Manning an A. Flexner,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 82.

  42. “21.02.1935, Manning an A. Flexner,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 82.

  43. “21.02.1935, Manning an A. Flexner,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 82.

  44. “28.02.1935, Veblen an A. Flexner,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 84–85.

  45. Weaver’s diary entry of March 20, 1935, is quoted in Kimberling, “Emmy Noether and Her Influence,” 36–37. The “fair chance for absorption” at IAS may on some level be a reference to the possibility of opening IAS membership to women. It was not until 1936 that the archaeologist Hetty Goldman, who earned her BA from Bryn Mawr College, became the first woman appointed as professor at the IAS. (See Seymour Sy Brody, Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America: 151 True Stories of Jewish American Heroism. Hollywood, FL: Frederick Fell Publishers, 2004, 93.) If Noether hadn’t died suddenly, she might have been the first professor appointed at IAS.

  46. Kimberling, “Emmy Noether and Her Influence,” 37.

  47. Letter from M.D. James L. Richards addressed to President Park, dated April 24, 1935.

  48. See President’s Office, about E. Noether.

  49. According to the May 16, 1935, letter from President Park to Emmy Noether’s brother, Fritz Noether.

  50. See President’s Office, about E. Noether; see also Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 50.

  51. Weyl’s memorial address was published in Scripta mathematica III, 3 (1935) 201–220. Reprinted in Dick 112–152. .

  52. Michael Cavna, “Emmy Noether Google Doodle: Why Einstein Called Her A ‘Creative Mathematical Genius,’” March 23, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/03/23/emmy-noether-google-doodle-why-einstein-called-her-a-creative-mathematical-genius/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.213b801d7c81; “04.05.1935, Nachruf auf E. Noether, von Einstein,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 87–88.

  53. “08.04.1935, Gutachten Stauffer, von E. Noether,” Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 43.

  54. Dick, 85–86.

  55. Quinn, McKee, Lehr, and Taussky, 143.

  56. See President’s Office, about E. Noether; see also Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 57–59.

  57. My translation. See President’s Office, about E. Noether; see also Dokumente zu Emmy Noether, 56. .

  58. Karen Hunger Parshall, “Training Women in Mathematical Research: The First Fifty Years of Bryn Mawr College (1885–1935),” Mathematical Intelligencer 37:2 (2015), 71–83.

  59. Email communication on March 23, 2018. William Dunham is a research associate in mathematics at Bryn Mawr College; see also Dunham’s discussion of these women mathematicians at the beginning of his article, “Bertrand Russell at Bryn Mawr,” Mathematical Intelligencer 38:3 (2016), 30–40.

  60. Letter to President John Nason of Swarthmore and President Felix Morley of Haverford on February 12, 1941.

  61. Boissoneault.

  62. Saunders Mac Lane, “Mathematics at the University of Göttingen 1931–1933,” in Brewer and Smith, 65–78, here 65.

  63. Tent, 146.

  64. Tent, 56.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this essay was presented as part of the panel “Refugee Scholars from Nazi Germany to the Tri-Co” during a Community Day of Learning at Bryn Mawr College on March 20, 2018, which focused on the theme “Being Bryn Mawr: Past, Present, and Future.” I want to thank my student Stephanie Strevey (’21) and Prof. David Cast, in Art History, for joining me on the panel. I want especially to thank Eric Pumroy, director of the Department of Special Collections at Bryn Mawr Library, for his generous help with locating and digitalizing archival files for this project, and Jane Epstein, assistant secretary of Bryn Mawr College, for pointing me to Abraham Flexner’s personal connections to Bryn Mawr and her encouraging support of this project. This article has been an investigative journey of discovery in which I have tried to pull together all the threads pertaining to Noether and Bryn Mawr College. And I am immensely grateful to Gene McGarry for his thorough reading, which pushed me to write a coherent story and solve as many puzzles as possible.

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  1. Department of German and German Studies, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, 19010, USA

    Qinna Shen

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It is everywhere incumbent upon university faculties … to maintain their historic duty of welcoming scholars, irrespective of race, religion and political opinion, into academic society, of protecting them in the interest of learning and human understanding, and of conserving for the world the ability and scholarship that might otherwise disappear.

—Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars

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Shen, Q. A Refugee Scholar from Nazi Germany: Emmy Noether and Bryn Mawr College. Math Intelligencer 41, 52–65 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00283-018-9852-0

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