Article ID: CBB000651667

Poor Taste as a Bright Character Trait: Emmy Noether and the Independent Social Democratic Party (2005)

unapi

The creation of algebraic topology required all the energy and the temperament of Emmy Noether according to topologists Paul Alexandroff and Heinz Hopf. Alexandroff stressed Noether's radical pro-Russian politics, which her colleagues found in poor taste; yet he found a bright trait of character. She joined the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) in 1919. They were tiny in Göttingen until that year when their vote soared as they called for a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Minister of the Army and many Göttingen students called them Bolshevist terrorists. Noether's colleague Richard Courant criticized USPD radicalism. Her colleague Hermann Weyl downplayed her radicalism and that view remains influential but the evidence favors Alexandroff. Weyl was ambivalent in parallel ways about her mathematics and her politics. He deeply admired her yet he found her abstractness and her politics excessive and even dangerous.

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Description On the political radicalism of an algebraic topologist.


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Authors & Contributors
Mechthild Koreuber
Tobies, Renate
Dando, Christina Elizabeth
Duarte, German A.
Ullrich, Peter
Tollmien, Cordula
Concepts
Mathematics
Topology
Science and politics
Algebra
Mathematicians
Women in science
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
Modern
20th century
18th century
Places
Germany
Prague (Czechia)
Berlin (Germany)
Institutions
Göttingen Academy
Göttingen. Universität
University of Chicago
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