17/08/2018

On the Science & Mathematics Blog, meet Emmy Nöther.

Crédito: Culturalizando

Reproduction from the IMPA Science & Mathematics blog, from O Globo, coordinated by Claudio Landim.

Márcia C. Barbosa , Institute of Physics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Ademir E. Santana , International Center for Physics, University of Brasília

In 1919, Emmy Nöther applied for and was accepted into an academic position at the University of Göttingen, a center that boasted names such as David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Albert Einstein, among others. However, even with the support of these eminent figures, the institution's conservatism prevented her hiring simply because she was a woman. Hilbert, angered by this decision, stated that Göttingen was a university, not a bathhouse, where the biological question of sex could be subject to discussion. Emmy was eventually hired only in 1922, but as an extraordinary lecturer, initially without pay. Emmy held this position until 1933, when, being the daughter of a Jewish mother, she had to leave Nazi Germany. After all, prejudice is an addictive process.

Emmy Nöther's life story, including her politically engaged stances, is intertwined with the struggle for women's effective, non-discriminatory, and equitable participation in contemporary societies. The process of constructing this current disparity has been analyzed in various ways and is based on the social construction of concepts such as "man" as antagonistic to "woman," which are naturalized but have nothing to do with biological genitalia, as Hilbert's observation about Emmy's non-hiring somewhat illustrates. This gender problem persists, has spanned centuries, is far from being resolved, and is addressed from two aspects: implicit (or invisible) violence and explicit brutality against women.

The oppression directed against women is reflected in observations regarding women's participation in key power structures in modern societies, such as the sciences. For example, consider the percentage of female doctoral students in physics in some countries: USA, 13%; France, 26%; Germany, 10%; Brazil, 15%. This oppression prevented Emmy from obtaining employment even after publishing, in 1918—exactly one hundred years ago—one of the most beautiful and fundamental results in physics: Nother's theorems, which underpin all theories of modern physics, from the standard cosmological model to the standard model of elementary particle physics, established through quantum field theory. If a physical system behaves the same way when a symmetry is changed, for example, by rotating the system, a physical quantity related to this symmetry is conserved. The magnitude of this discovery was already recognized when, in 1919, Emmy was refused employment.

But who was Amalie Emily Nöther, affectionately known as Emmy? She was born on March 23, 1882, in Erlangen, a university city since 1002, in Germany. She was the daughter of Ida Amalia Kauffmann and Max Nöther, an algebraist and professor at the University of Erlangen. Emmy, as was traditional for well-educated young women of the time, devoted herself to the piano and the study of English and French, graduating as a teacher in those languages. In 1900, German universities opened their doors to the education of women, but only conditionally.

In 1903, Emmy was accepted to the University of Göttingen. From then on, she dedicated herself to mathematics. In 1904, she enrolled as a doctoral student at the University of Erlangen. She defended her thesis, which was approved with distinction, on the theory of algebraic invariants. Emmy was supervised by Paul A. Gordon, and the thesis was entitled "On Complete Systems of Invariants for Ternary Biquadratic Forms".

To read the full text, visit the newspaper's website.