From Simon Goodman, Griesheim, Germany
You criticise Alessandro Strumia's unacceptable and biologically false comments on the abilities of female physicists (Leader, 6 October). His views highlight an appalling, continuing basal sexism that dogs the physical sciences as it does other fields.
But to compare Emmy Noether's difficulty in getting a university position with Albert Einstein's life is perhaps not good history. He too had problems. Graduating in 1901, he repeatedly failed to get a position. He took a job as a private tutor, before personal connections got him a post at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland. Even after the 1905 publication of the papers that changed modern physics, including his Nobel-prizewinning explanation of the photoelectric effect, he waited three years to get a post at the University of Bern.
The brilliant Noether gained her doctorate in 1907, but had to wait until 1923 before she got a paid university position. Like Einstein, she had an additional profound “burden” in the nationalistic pit that was then Germany: she was a Jew.
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