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[anoether-life]

13.09.1933

Emmy receives a letter from Göttingen’s curator, that in accordance with the minister’s decree from September 2 her teaching license has been withdrawn, based on §3 (non-Arian heritage) of the Act on the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

A scan of the telegram can be viewed on the website of the Kulturerbe Niedersachsen.

[anoether-life]

07.09.1933

Emmy's request for a delay causes a few problems, because the initial funding for her position was only granted for the year 1933-34 and it is unclear whether the funding can be postponed. However, the position in Somerville is also funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, but by the Paris office. Thus, Warren Weaver, head of the Natural Sciences Department of the New York Rockefeller Foundation, sends out two telegrams. The first one goes to the Paris office of the Rockefeller Foundation:

BRYNMAWR [sic] REPORTS NOETHER ACCEPTS YEAR APPOINTMENT BUT REQUESTS POSTPONEMENT ONE YEAR ACCOUNT SOMERVILLE STOP CABLE AMOUNT YOUR CONTRIBUTION AND ADVICE PROBABILITY REMAINING SOMERVILLE MORE THAN ONE YEAR

The second one goes to Marion Park:

DECISION IN THE NOETHER CASE COMPLICATED BY FACT THAT OUT PARIS OFFICE IS ASSISTING IN SOMERVILLE APPOINTMENT AND MAXIMUM ASSISTANCE FOR ONE PERSON IS DEFINITELY LIMITED. HAVE CABLED FOR INFORMATION WHICH SHOULD BE HERE MONDAY.

[anoether-life]

24.08.-05.09.1933

Emmy's answer takes a while to get to the U.S. and doesn't arrive until September 5. In the meantime there is a lot of back-and-forth between the Rockefeller Foundation and Bryn Mawr College, asking if there are any news. This becomes increasingly difficult as Marion Park is away until the middle of September, so her secretary Ruby Hansell has to reply to and forward all of her letters.

[anoether-life]

18.08.1933

Emmy answers Park, accepting her invitation to Bryn Mawr but asking for a delay to 1934-35, since she is already planning to go to Oxford for the Easter term:

My dear Dr. Park, Ich danke Ihnen und dem College, vor allem dem Department of mathematics, vielmals für das mir überraschend angebotene Stipendium. Es war mir eine große Freude und ich werde es mit Vergnügen annehmen. Ich muß allerdings um eine Verschiebung um ein Jahr bitten, auf das akademische Jahr 1934/35. Aber ich hoffe und vermute daß das keine allzu großen Schwierigkeiten machen wird. Ich habe nämlich für diesen Winter, für den Weihnachts-Oster-Term, schon eine Einladung nach Oxford angenommen, in das Somerville College, zu Gastvorlesungen an der Universität die auch den Mathematikern der anderen Colleges zugänglich sein werden. Bis zur Beendigung dieser Vorlesungen ist auch das akademische Jahr fast beendet. Es ist mir persönlich ein sehr angenehmes Gefühl schon für zwei Jahre im voraus meine Pläne machen zu können; Ich hoffe sicher daß sich alles gut regeln wird. Ihre sehr ergebene, Emmy Noether

[anoether-life]

07.08.1933

Göttingen’s curator Justus Theodor Valentiner sends appraisals for Emmy from 14 professional colleagues (organised by Helmut Hasse) to the ministry. He adds a negative statement of his own, in which he states, that Emmy had "stood on Marxist ground" from 1918 until today and that "an unreserved defence of the national state is not to be expected from her”, suggesting a possible dismissal under § 4 (political unreliability) of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which had not yet been discussed.

[anoether-life]

04.08.1933

After Thomas B. Appleget of the New York Rockefeller Foundation confirmed to Marion Park, that they would give a grant of $2,000 for 1933-34 the day before, Park writes a letter to Emmy, informing her that the Rockefeller Foundation and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars together made a grant of $4,000 and thus inviting her to Bryn Mawr for the academic year 1933-34.

[anoether-life]

This picture was most likely taken around 1915, when Emmy was already in Göttingen. It appears in a photo album gifted to David Hilbert on January 23, 1922, for his 60th birthday.

[anoether-life]

20.07.1915

After she worked in Göttingen for a few months, Emmy hands in her first application for habilitation to the department of mathematics and natural sciences of the university's faculty of arts and humanities. As her habilitation thesis, she hands in her recently finished work "Körper und Systeme rationaler Funktionen".

[anoether-life]

14.07.1903

Emmy takes her Reifeprüfung at the Königliches Realgymnasium Nürnberg, which is her graduation from high school.

[anoether-life]

11.07.1933

Marion Park writes two letters. One of them is a direct reply to Edward Murrow, informing them that Bryn Mawr wants to hire Emmy, the other one is to the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, asking for funding for Emmy's position at Bryn Mawr. The suggestion to hire Emmy came from Anna Pell Wheeler, Bryn Mawr's head of the mathematics department, who in 1905 also spent a year studying in Göttingen. Both letters by Park contain the following:

[Professor Wheeler] suggests that Dr. Noethe [sic!] be invited to reside at Bryn Mawr for a year to carry on research and to consult with advanced graduate students. I understand form Professor Lefschetz that Dr. Noethe’s English will probably not allow of lecturing immediately. Under an arrangement going into effect next year graduate courses in mathematics are to be exchanged between the University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr and this arrangement may increase the usefulness of Dr. Noethe's visit at Bryn Mawr.

[anoether-life]

03.07.1933

While Emmy continues to work with her colleagues and students back in Germany (mostly holding meetings and seminars in her private apartment), unbeknownst to her, Edward R. Murrow of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars writes to Marion E. Park, the president of Bryn Mawr College:

The Emergency Committee has granted the sum of $2,000 to Bryn Mawr for the support of a German scholar to be chosen by you. The grant is made on the assumption that you will desire to offer the German scholar selected a salary of approximately $4,000 a year. The balance necessary to complete this amount may be raised from any available source, but the Committee suggests that you communicate immediately with the Rockefeller Foundation, […] informing them of the grant made by the Emergency Committee and formally requesting a sum sufficient to meet the balance.

The Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars, which was later expanded to "Displaced Foreign Scholars", worked to relocate German academics to the U.S., most of whom were directly targeted by the Nazis.

[anoether-life]

This might be one of the most famous pictures of Emmy, and a colourised version of it was also used for this blog's icon. Judging from her clothing and how she looks in comparison to other pictures we have of her, it was most likely taken around 1900 with her being around 18 years old.

[anoether-life]

17.06.1917

After the university of Frankfurt had called Emmy to habilitate there, Göttingen's maths and science department sends a letter to the ministry, claiming the same right as Frankfurt to habilitate Emmy. The ministry, however, simply replies on June 20 in saying that Frankfurt also doesn't have the right to habilitate Emmy, so there is nothing to worry about for Göttingen.

[anoether-life]

04.06.1919

Göttingen's maths and science department holds a public meeting with a trial lecture by Emmy. Afterwards, there is a unanimous decision to hire her as a private lecturer.

[anoether-life]

28.05.1919

The habilitation colloquium for Emmy is held in Göttingen with “Invariante Variationsprobleme” as her habilitation thesis.

[anoether-life]

19.05.1929

Emmy writes to Richard Brauer from Moscow, reporting on the hot weather:

Hier herrscht Hitze, wie wir sie in Deutschland nur kurz im Hochsommer haben; es war ein fast direkter Übergang vom Winter, dessen Kälte mich garnicht gestört hat. Ich glaube, man hat in Deutschland viel mehr gefroren als hier wo man sich zu schützen weiß.”

[anoether-life]

09.05.1915

After Emmy had just moved to Göttingen to work together with Hilbert and Klein on Einstein's Theory of Relativity, her mother Ida Amalia Noether surprisingly dies at age 62 and Emmy temporarily returns to Erlangen.