Theatre Performance: Diving into Math with Emmy Noether

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Theatre Performance: Diving into Math with Emmy Noether

  • Wed 12 Mar 2025
  • 7:00PM

Join us for a unique live theatre performance that brings the extraordinary life and work of Emmy Noether to the stage. "Diving into Math with Emmy Noether" is a captivating biographical play, directed by Sandra Schueddekopf and starring Anita Zieher as Emmy. Blending history, drama and mathematics, this production illuminates the groundbreaking contributions of one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. Performed by the Austrian ensemble portraittheater, the play offers an engaging and insightful journey into Noether’s world.

Emmy Noether (1882-1935) was one of the most influential mathematicians of the last century. Her works and teachings left a lasting mark on modern algebra, opening new avenues for a modern structural perspective in mathematics.

The Austrian ensemble portraittheater together with the Freie Universitaet Berlin produced a biographical play about Emmy Noether. The play is partly based on the biography of the Austrian historian of mathematics, Auguste Dick, who was the first one writing a biography about Emmy Noether by collecting obituaries and personal memories from colleagues. Based on historical documents, the script was written by the artists Sandra Schueddekopf and Anita Zieher in cooperation with the historians Mechthild Koreuber and David E. Rowe.

On stage and in videos with other actors, Emmy Noether’s fascinating personality comes alive in her reflections and conversations with other leading mathematicians of her day.

The original play in German has been performed with great success at several universities in Germany (e.g. Bonn, Konstanz, Berlin) and in the Theater Drachengasse in Vienna. In 2022 and 2023 the English Version, Diving into Math with Emmy Noether, was on tour at 14 universities and colleges in the USA, amongst them Harvard University, MIT, the University of Chicago and Michigan State University. In autumn 2023 portraittheater performed the play in Nantes and at the Sorbonne Université in Paris.

Diving into Math with Emmy Noether

Photo: © Helena Wimmer

portraittheater will also be performing the play at Cambridge University and Edingburgh University as part of their spring tour and then in the USA in Boston, Oklahoma, Davis and Stanford.


Diving into Math with Emmy Noether
Actress: Anita Zieher
Director: Sandra Schueddekopf
Scientific board: Mechthild Koreuber and David E. Rowe
A theatre performance by portraittheater Vienna
in co-operation with Freie Universitaet Berlin

For more information, please visit:
https://www.portraittheater.net/?portfolio=diving-into-math-with-emmy-noether
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCuqQApjUPo


Emmy Noether (1882-1935) began her studies at a time when women were only beginning to break through the barriers that prevented them from entering the doors of German universities. She eventually overcame even stronger resistance when she applied for the right to teach at a German university. It took her four years before she acquired that certification (Habilitation) in Göttingen on June 4, 1919, after submitting a thesis in which she solved one of the central problems in Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Although she never received a professorship at a German university, Noether became one of the most influential mathematicians of her era. As the “Mother of Modern Algebra,” she inspired many leading figures worldwide. Conversational mathematics played an essential part in her work, as recalled by Bartel van der Waerden, Pavel Alexandroff, Helmut Hasse and Olga Taussky-Todd. In 1933, after Hitler came to power, she was one of the first instructors to be dismissed by the Nazi government. After receiving an offer for a one-year appointment as a research professor at Bryn Mawr College, she moved to the USA, where she also lectured at Princeton University. In 1935, Emmy Noether died unexpectedly after an operation; her ashes are interred under the cloisters at Bryn Mawr College.

portraittheater is a Viennese theatre ensemble that focuses on extraordinary persons, especially women, and brings their lives and work to the stage. The company has produced and performed a wide variety of plays since 2006, featuring such diverse personalities as Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Hedy Lamarr, Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir. The ensemble has offered guest performances throughout Europe in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, but also in Australia as well as the United States. www.portraittheater.net

Anita Zieher, actress, born in Salzburg (Austria). After studying political science and communications in Salzburg, she studied acting in Vienna. Since 2006, as founder and chair of portraittheater, she has had the opportunity to perform in hundreds of shows in many countries. In addition to the roles named above, she has also played e.g. Bertha von Suttner, George Sand, Rosa Luxemburg, Caroline Herschel, Williamina Fleming and Sally Ride. She has also won prizes as an improv player and comedian. www.anitazieher.at

Sandra Schueddekopf, director and vice-chair of portraittheater, born in Hanover (Germany). Over the period from 2001-2005 she had a position as assistant director at the famous Burgtheater in Vienna. Since 2005 she has worked as a freelance director at Schauspielhaus Graz, Theater Drachengasse, Munich Kammerspiele, Schauspielhaus Vienna, and at the Mainz State Theater, where she won the director's prize in 2009. Since 2008, she has headed the renowned Retzhofer drama prize.

Diving into Math with Emmy Noether

© Sandra Schueddekopf

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Austrian Cultural Forum London
28 Rutland Gate
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