Questioning Princeton’s Connection to These Eminent Scholars

As a mathematician, I read with interest the article in the January PAW about mathematicians Emmy Noether and Anna Pell Wheeler. They were certainly remarkable figures.

But I couldn’t see the Princeton connection, other than that Wheeler was married to a Princeton professor. And I both chuckled and gagged a bit to read about the “heroic efforts” of the Princeton mathematics community to bring refugee scholars to the United States (maybe true with respect to male mathematicians), and that “to this day, Princeton is justifiably proud of its association with the very eminent Noether.” Huh? What association? I didn’t see Princeton offer her a professorship, even though she was a world-class mathematician who was at least the equal of anyone on the Princeton faculty at the time, or the European men Princeton hired during that era. The best she could do was a visiting professorship at Bryn Mawr and a lectureship at the Institute for Advanced Study (which has no connection with Princeton University).

It may have been a different time, but Princeton did not cover itself with glory here and should not pretend it did.