Emmy Noether in Erlangen and Göttingen

Abstract

The Noether ancestors were well-to-do Jewish tradesmen engaged in the iron business in the Black Forest area of southern Germany. In the early nineteenth century, two brothers, Joseph and Hermann, moved to Mannheim and founded a wholesale iron business that remained in Noether hands until the takeover by the Nazis. In 1838, Hermann married the daughter of a Mannheim businessman, whose side interest seems to have been the study of mathematics. Hermann and his wife had three sons and two daughters. Two sons continued in the family business. But the third son, Max, born in 1844 had no inclination for a business career. He had the ill-fortune to be stricken with polio at the age of 14 and remained handicapped for the remainder of his life. He studied astronomy at the observatory in Mannheim and later mathematics at the Universities of Heidelberg, Giessen, and Gottingen. In 1868, Heidelberg awarded him the Ph.D. without his having written a dissertation. After 5 years as a Privatdozent in Heidelberg, he went to Erlangen, where he held a chair in mathematics until his death in 1921.