Last week, the Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College collaborated with Binghamton University’s Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention and other collegiate programs to present “Finding Refuge at Bryn Mawr: The Exiled Mathematician Emmy Noether.”

Qinna Shen, an associate professor of German at Bryn Mawr College, was the primary speaker at the event. Shen authored “A Refugee Scholar from Nazi Germany: Emmy Noether and Bryn Mawr College,” describing the life of Emmy Noether, a German mathematician from a Jewish family who found refuge in the United States during the Holocaust.

According to I-GMAP’s website, the institute works to “increase understanding, develop commitment, and build capacity for effective prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities.” I-GMAP oversees events to allow multidisciplinary academics and practitioners to “build bridges” and share research related to atrocity prevention.

Kerry Whigham, co-director and associate professor of genocide and mass atrocity prevention, explained that I-GMAP has worked with a number of organizations, including the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, to educate on refugee experiences across time and space.

“This event, in particular, aligns with one of I-GMAP’s priority areas, as we focus a lot of our efforts into highlighting the connections between immigrant and refugee populations and atrocity prevention,” Whigham wrote in an email to Pipe Dream. “Refugees are often the consequence of atrocity violence in their own countries, but they are also always at increased risk for identity-based violence while they are in transit and when they reach new host countries.”

A Jewish mathematician, Noether was forced to flee Germany during World War II and eventually taught at Bryn Mawr College in the United States. Shen’s research with Jewish refugees and her curiosity about her institution’s alumni led to her research on Noether.

Mark Zelcer, assistant professor of philosophy at Queensborough Community College, highlighted the wide reach of Shen’s paper about Noether.

“It escaped the humanities entirely,” said Zelcer. “It circulated among physicists and mathematicians worldwide and helped restore the memory of a woman who Einstein himself called a genius — a woman who had been expelled from her university by Nazis and found refuge at the very college where Professor Shen now teaches and serves as department chair.”

Noether was born the eldest of four children to Max Noether, a professor of mathematics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Shen described Noether’s desire to study math in university, and the difficulty of finding a university that accepted women. Instead, Noether audited courses at her father’s workplace, the University of Erlangen. Later, she enrolled in the University of Göttingen and was able to officially enroll in the University of Erlangen. According to Shen, she was one of the only women in the mathematics department.

Noether caught the attention of mathematicians Felix Klein and David Hilbert. In her work with abstract math, she was introduced to German physicist Albert Einstein and helped test his current theories, which eventually came to be known as the theory of general relativity.

“[Einstein] told David Hilbert, and I quote, ‘You know that Fraulein Noether is continually advising me in my projects on general relativity, and that it is really through her that I have become competent in the subject,’” said Shen.

According to Shen, Noether tutored Einstein in mathematics. Shen explained that Noether shared early versions of her theories with her colleagues but was not fully credited. Her overall contributions to the field of physics were never fully acknowledged.

“Einstein has become, as you know, the scientist, but Emmy Noether was forgotten for the most part of the 20th century,” said Shen.

Shen explained that through her hard work, Noether became a Privatdozent, which allowed her to officially lecture at the University of Göttingen. She worked there at the same time as physicists like J. Robert Oppenheimer. As Hitler rose to power, Noether was one of many Jewish professors forced to leave Germany.

Noether had originally been in talks to teach at Somerville College, the women’s college at the University of Oxford, and she had wanted to teach at Princeton University alongside her fellow German colleagues. However, Princeton excluded women at the time. Noether eventually accepted her position at Bryn Mawr College. Shen explained that Noether enjoyed her students at Bryn Mawr and eventually began guest lecturing at Princeton on a regular basis.

In 1935, at the age of 53, Noether died as a result of complications from surgery related to a cyst on her ovary.

Shen highlighted that even with Noether’s passing, her legacy lives in her work and in the role model she continues to be for women in STEM. Members of the scientific community mourned Noether’s death, with Einstein writing a letter detailing his appreciation for all the work she did.

“Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematician genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began,” wrote Einstein in a letter to the New York Times.