This year marked the 100th anniversary of the publication of a groundbreaking paper in the area of mathematics known as ring theory by a German Jew named Emmy Noether—whom Albert Einstein would later describe as a “creative mathematical genius.” When Noether completed her doctorate in 1909, at the age of twenty-seven, women were barred from the faculties of German universities. She only obtained a position as a lecturer in 1919. Tamar Lichter Blanks tells her story:

Noether made important contributions to theoretical physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity. . . . Noetherian rings, [a category of mathematical phenomena she discovered], show up all the time in modern mathematics. Mathematicians still use Noether’s [methods] today, not just in ring theory, but in other areas such as number theory and algebraic geometry.

Noether published her famous ring-theory paper and other important results in mathematics while she was a lecturer in Göttingen from 1919 to 1933. But in the spring of 1933, the University of Göttingen received a telegram: six faculty members—including Noether—had to stop teaching immediately. The Nazis had passed a law barring Jews from professorship.

Noether’s response, it seems, was calm. “This thing is much less terrible for me than it is for many others,” she wrote in a letter to a fellow mathematician. But she was out of a job, and no university in Germany could hire her.

Help came from the United States. Bryn Mawr, a women’s college in Pennsylvania, offered Noether a professorship through a special fund for refugee German scholars. . . . Noether’s time at Bryn Mawr was, tragically, short. In 1935 she had surgery to remove a tumor and died unexpectedly four days later.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.