Fritz Noether


Fritz Alexander Ernst Noether was a famous German mathematician arrested in the Soviet Union and executed by the Stalinist NKVD.

Biography

Fritz Noether's father Max Noether was a mathematician and professor in Erlangen. The notable mathematician Emmy Noether was his elder sister; his oldest son was a chemist, Herman D. Noether and his second son was a mathematician Gottfried Noether.
Fritz Noether was also an able mathematician. Not allowed to work in Nazi Germany for being a Jew, he moved to the Soviet Union, where he was appointed to a professorship at the Tomsk State University.
In November 1937, during the Great Purge, he was arrested at his home in Tomsk by the NKVD. On 23 October 1938, Noether was sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment on charges of espionage and sabotage. He served time in different prisons. On 8 September 1941 the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court sentenced Professor F. Noether to death on the accusation of "anti-Soviet propaganda". He was shot in Orel on 10 September 1941. His burial place is unknown, but there is a memorial plaque in the Gengenbach Cemetery, Germany, at the site of his wife's grave.
Gottfried E. Noether, Fritz Noether's other child, wrote a brief biography of his father. He was an American statistician and educator.
On 22 Dec 1988, the Plenum of the USSR Supreme Court ruled that Professor Fritz M. Noether had been convicted on groundless charges and voided his sentence, thus fully rehabilitating him.