Bessie Stringfield – motorbiking across the USA

A common theme of my Herstory blog posts is women doing things that ‘nice girls’ were not meant to do, and today’s post is no exception. Bessie Stringfield, the first black woman to ride solo across America on a motorcycle, crossed the Southern states at a time when independent women and blacks were not welcome, breaking barriers, being fearless and paving the way for all female riders.

Stories of Bessie’s early life are confused as there are so many versions; she was a master storyteller and didn’t let truth get in the way of a good tale. It seems likely that she was born in 1911 in North Carolina to a black Jamaican father and a white Dutch mother. A stubborn tomboy, Bessie made up her mind that she wanted a motorbike at the age of 16 and her adoptive mother bought her a 1928 Indian Scout, even though Bessie had no idea how to ride it. Soon she switched to the first of 27 Harley Davidsons she owned during her lifetime.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Bessie took eight long-distance, solo rides across the United States, including the Deep South. She planned her routes by tossing a coin and going to wherever it landed. When later asked if she would repeat the toss if the penny landed in land where the Ku Klux Klan were known to be active, she replied, “A penny makes a wide circle on a map. I could ride anywhere I wanted inside the circle or around the edges if I had to.” Life on the road wasn’t easy. Many roads weren’t paved and she broke down often. Sometimes she was chased off the road and was deliberately knocked down by a white male in a pickup truck while traveling in the South. Accommodation was a problem; many motels wouldn’t allow black women. She often slept on her bike, using her rolled-up jacket as a pillow across the handlebars, while resting her feet on the rear. But she also encountered kindness. Black families were curious and friendly, often offering her a room for the night. Some white gas station owners were so impressed with Bessie that they filled her tanks for free. She was the first black woman known to have travelled by motorcycle to all 48 states in the continental US. During this time, she made money by performing stunts on the Wall of Death at carnivals. She also entered races as a man. After she won, she revealed she was a woman and was disqualified.

During World War II, she became a dispatch rider, carrying documents between domestic army bases, the only woman in a small unit in the segregated army. She completed the rigorous training and rode her own Harley-Davidson. After the war, she became a licenced practical nurse and founded the Iron Horse Motorcycle Club in Miami, where she was known by locals as  the Motorcycle Queen of Miami. The local police refused her a licence at first, until she demanded a meeting with the chief of police and showed off her skills.

Bessie was a private person but is known to have married and divorced six times, all to men more than 20 years her junior. When interviewed at age 75 she said, “I wouldn’t have a man over 35, even now.“ After losing three babies with her first husband, Bessie’s heartbreak prevented from trying again to have children. In later life, Bessie suffered from an enlarged heart but defied doctors’ orders to give up riding until shortly before her death in 1993 at the age of 82. When reflecting on her life, she said: “I spent most of my life alone, lookin’ for a family. I found my family in motorcycling.”

Nancy Wake – the war heroine who ran rings around the Gestapo

Today’s post is the tale of a feisty, fun and fearless woman.   Known as the White Mouse for her ability to run rings round the Gestapo, Nancy Wake was Australia’s greatest war heroine and one of the most decorated agents of the Second World War.

Nancy was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1912, but her family moved to Sydney Australia in when she was just 20 months old. Soon afterwards, her father returned to New Zealand, and her mother raised her alone. Hers was an impoverished childhood and she ran away from home at the age of 16, believing she had two career choices: becoming a prostitute or a journalist. In 1932, a small inheritance from an aunt enabled her to leave Australia. She decided that journalism offered her the best opportunities for travel, and visited London, New York and Paris, deciding that the latter suited her best. She worked as a freelance journalist and made the most of the Paris nightlife. In 1936, she met Henry Fiocca, a wealthy businessman with whom she enjoyed a decadent lifestyle before the outbreak of World War II. However, during their travels around Europe, she witnessed Nazis randomly beating up Jewish people on the streets, and this was to transform her from a fun-loving young woman to the determined fighter she became.

From the beginning, Nancy was determined to play an active role in the war. She said: “I hate wars and violence but if they come then I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.” Using their wealth and social standing as a cover, she and Henri helped hundreds of Allied servicemen and Jewish refugees escape from France into neutral Spain. When the authorities threatened to catch up with her, Nancy fled to Spain and from there to England, where she became a member of the Special Operations Executive. Henri, who stayed behind, was captured and later executed for refusing to inform on her. Nancy was a quick learner whose skills with a gun put all the men to shame. Her work involved organising parachute drops of arms, establishing communication networks between the British military and French resistance, and occasional combat. She killed a German sentry with a single karate chop to the neck, and ordered the execution of a woman she believed to be a German spy. By her own admission: “I was not a very nice person and it didn’t put me off my breakfast.” But her proudest moment was cycling through several Nazi checkpoints over 500 km in less than 72 hours to reopen communications after Resistance radio codes were destroyed.

Although a glamorous figure, Nancy wanted to be taken seriously among the men and had no time for flattery: when her parachute became entangled in a tree, the man who found her commented: “I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year.” She replied: “Don’t give me that French shit.” She did, however, admit that she flirted shamelessly while talking her way out of precarious situations, and evaded capture many times. A fellow officer commented: “She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then, she is like five men.” At the end of the war, Nancy received so many military awards from the UK, France and the US that, in later life, she lived on the proceeds of their sale.

After the war, Nancy struggled to adjust to an ordinary existence; her desk job at the British Embassy bored her and she returned to Australia in 1949. After two unsuccessful attempts to become elected to parliament, she married a retired RAF officer, John Forward. They lived a happy and gregarious existence until his death in 1997, when she decided to spend the rest of her life in England, living in a hotel and racking up considerable debts thanks to the six gin-and-tonics she downed most days. It’s rumoured that, among others, Prince Charles helped pay her bills. She died in 2011, shortly before her 99^th birthday.

Katherine Johnson – the woman who put men into space

 

For a while, I’ve been thinking of restarting my Herstory blogs and have been amassing a list of inspirational women. Yesterday, I heard of the death of one of these women – Katherine Johnson – at the age of 101. Katherine was born in West Virginia in 1918 and was a child prodigy where maths was concerned; she entered high school at age 10. In her home town of White Sulphur Springs, the school for African-Americans normally stopped at the eighth grade. However, Katherine’s father, was determined that Katherine should fulfil her potential, so he drove the family 120 miles to another town, Institute, where Katherine could complete high school, and enrol into college. For eight years, he rented a house for the family to stay during the school year and travelled each day to White Sulphur Springs, for his job at a hotel. This allowed all four of his children to go to high school and college. Katherine skipped several grades, and graduated from West Virginia State college at just 18, with degrees in both mathematics and French. She married in 1939 and had planned to continue her education, when she became one of only three black students, and the first black woman, to be enrolled at West Virginia University  graduate school, but became pregnant in her first year and chose to withdraw.

In 1953, Katherine began working for NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as one of their team of women ‘computers’ – these were the days when even calculators were not reliable and the number crunching was done by humans.  According to NASA historian Bill Barry, “The women were meticulous and accurate… and they didn’t have to pay them very much.” The office was segregated and Katherine worked in the West Computing section with other black women. Their table at the cafeteria had a sign that said ‘coloured computers’. At first Katherine didn’t even realize that the restrooms were segregated, since the restrooms for white employees weren’t marked and she didn’t see any coloured bathrooms. When confronted with her mistake, she ignored the comment and continued to use the white restrooms.

In 1956, her first husband, James Goble, died from a brain tumour. But Katherine maintained her promise to allow her daughters to attend college, juggling the demands of being a single working mother by assigning chores to the girls.

When the space race began in the early 60s, Katherine’s equations helped to accurately calculated the trajectories of Alan Shepard’s flight when he became the first American to reach space. She also worked on John Glenn’s orbit around the earth; her reputation was so great that he requested that she check all the computer’s calculations on trajectories and entry points. Women weren’t usually included in space briefings but Katherine asked permission to go. Later in the decade, Katherine played a pivotal role in planning the Apollo 11 mission, and in 1970 worked on emergency procedures to rescue the lunar lander in the Apollo 13 mission.

Later in her career, Katherine co-authored one of the first textbooks on space travel, and contributed to plans for a mission to Mars. And still, she was barely known outside NASA. Her long-overdue recognition came from President Obama in 2015 when he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), the highest honour a civilian can receive. In 2016, Hidden Figures brought her story to a wide audience. Since then, NASA have named a facility in her honour, and led the many tributes to her yesterday, describing her as an “American hero” whose “pioneering legacy will never be forgotten”.

Emily Davison – why every woman in the UK should vote today

Although Emily Davison is one of the best-known suffragettes, I felt I had to include her in my blog as I get so sick of hearing young women saying they can’t be bothered to vote. Here’s why you should:

Emily Wilding Davison was born in 1872 and had a comfortable middle-class upbringing. She excelled academically and studied at the Royal Holloway College. But the death of her father, when she was 19, put the family finances under pressure, so she quit her studies and worked as a governess. Eventually she saved enough money to pay for a term at St Hugh’s Hall, a women’s college in Oxford, and earned a first class degree in English language and literature, but was not given it as Oxford did not grant degrees to women at the time.

After college, Emily was frustrated to find that career options for women were limited. She took the only route open to her – teaching – during which time she became interested in the women’s movement. In 1906 she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and soon became a popular speaker because of her passion and wit.

For three years Emily tried to teach and campaign but eventually decided to devote all of her time to the cause, suffering financial hardship in the process. Her desire to draw public attention for the women’s suffrage led her to ever increasing acts of daring. In 1909, she was sentenced to a month’s hard labour in Strangeways Prison in Manchester after throwing rocks at the carriage of chancellor David Lloyd George. Her refusal to eat while in prison led to her being force fed, an ordeal she underwent 49 times over the next few years. When she blockaded herself in her cell to avoid another force feeding, a prison guard placed a hose through a cell window and drenched her with icy water.

The incident only spurred Emily on to more militant acts. In 1911 she hid in a cupboard in the House of Commons. She remained there during the census so that she could list her place of residence as the “House of Commons” on the census form. Later that year she set fire to a letter box. While in prison in Holloway in 1912, desperation at the torture her comrades were undergoing led her to throw herself down an iron staircase. After her release, she told one journalist that this had been a suicide attempt, as she felt that “by nothing but the sacrifice of human life would the nation be brought to realise the horrible torture our women face. If I had succeeded I am sure that forcible feeding could not in all conscience have been resorted to again.”

By 1913, the WSPU looked no closer to securing their aim of votes for women than they had at their inaugural meeting. 10 years earlier. Suffragettes were enduring increasingly brutal treatment in prison. And so Emily performed the ultimate publicity-seeking act. At the Epsom Derby, she stood by the railings, a flag of the WSPU tied around her. With the race in full flow, she ducked under the railings and tried to grab the rein’s of the king’s horse. The horrific event was witnessed by King George V and Queen Mary, and also captured on film. Historians have examined the footage and believe she was trying to attach her flag to the horse’s bridle, rather than throw herself in the path of the horse. The horse trampled her and unseated the rider, who escaped with minor injuries. Emily, however, was left with a fractured skull and internal injuries, form which she never recovered. She died four days later, exactly 104 years ago today, aged 40. Her funeral on saw thousands of suffragettes accompany the coffin, with tens of thousands of people lining the streets of London.

History hasn’t been kind to Emily. She’s been portrayed as an unbalanced fanatic, causing more harm than good to the cause. But her death highlights the extreme measures the suffragettes were driven to. So I beg women of the UK to remember that your vote costs you nothing. It cost Emily Davison everything.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias – one of the greatest female sports stars in history

‘Babe’ Didrikson Zaharias was one of the greatest female sports stars in history and her achievements are so extraordinary I was amazed not to have heard of her.

Babe was born into a poor Norwegian immigrant family in Texas. Christened Mildred, she was given the nickname Babe after the baseball player Babe Ruth. She was a tough, foul-mouthed girl who described women as ‘sissies who wore girdles, bras and that junk’ and spent her youth playing baseball and basketball with boys as they proved better competition than girls. At school she was the star of the basketball, baseball, volleyball, tennis, golf and swimming teams.

At age 18, the Employers Casualty Insurance Company, persuaded her to leave school and play for its women’s basketball team in the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1932, she was the sole member of their team, competing with other company teams of up to 20 women, often finishing one heat and then immediately rushing to the starting line of another. She won five events and took the championship. She went on to participate in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Here she made the first of what became her famous audacious declarations: ‘I am out to beat everybody in sight and that’s just what I’m going to do.’ She almost succeeded, winning gold in the a javelin and 80 metres and silver in the high jump after the judges ruled that her jumping style was illegal, a rule that no longer exists. She became instantly famous but after the Olympics found few places to compete and had to endure prejudice and ridicule, accused of being a man in disguise and having taken up sport to compensate for her inability to catch a man

In need of a job, she became a vaudeville performer, touring Chicago and New York with a show that included stunts such as hitting plastic golf balls into the crowd. The performances became hugely popular and made her rich. In 1932, she began playing golf and in only her 11^th game produced a 260-yard shot from the first tee. She entered the all-male Los Angeles Open, an achievement that would not be repeated until 2003. Golfing legend Bobby Jones described her as one of the 10 best golfers of all time, male or female. Wherever she played, she attracted crowds. As a journalist explained: ‘Babe stalks the fairway with a conscious sense of theater. She flips king-size cigarettes into the air and catches them nonchalantly in her mouth, then lights her match with her fingernail. Her hawkish, sun-toughened face is frozen for the most part in a thin-lipped mask, but she knows when to let go a wisecrack. When one of her tremendous drives sails out of bounds, she turns to the crowd and explains, “I hit it straight but it went crooked”… She operates like a woman whose life is a constant campaign to astound people.’ Babe wasn’t popular among her fellow golfers, probably because of her habit of telling them that they were all playing for second place, but this was the truth. She dominated women’s golf in the late 1940s and her 14-tournament winning streak remains the longest in history. In 1950 the AP acclaimed her the “Woman Athlete of the Half Century.”

In 1938, she met George Zaharias, a 235-pound professional wrestler who impressed her by being able to drive a gold ball further that she could. By December they were married. It was a successful and happy marriage; George became Babe’s business manager and trainer.

In 1953, Babe was diagnosed with colon cancer and underwent a colostomy. Despite reports that she would never play again, she won the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open by a record 12 strokes. Sadly, her cancer worsened and she died on September 1956, at the age of 45.

Caroline Haslett: freed women from domestic drudgery

Today’s blog post tells of a pioneering woman of the 20^th century whose feminism took a very practical form. Caroline Haslett was born in 1895 in Sussex, where her father was a railway engineer. She grew up preferring to play with machinery rather than dolls. A bad back kept her from attending school regularly, and as a result she was considered not strong enough to ever lead a normal life and was advised to leave school as it would be a waste of time. But she worked on strengthening her spine and not only finished school, but also attended secretarial college. In her teens, she became a suffragette. Her first job was as a secretary with the Cochran Boiler Company in London in 1914, just as war was breaking out in Europe. The shortage of men gave Caroline her chance to learn about the engineering side of the company and by 1918 she moved to Cochran’s Scotland site. In 1919 she took the job of secretary with the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), which had been founded to ensure that the opportunities provided by the war for women to enter traditionally male professions were not lost. Caroline worked tirelessly to break down the prejudices of employers towards women in the workplace, and to ensure that women gained access to courses at universities and engineering institutions that had previously been open only to men. The society also provided career advice.

But Caroline wanted to help all women, not just those seeking careers. In the early 1920s, few houses had electric light or heating, and domestic appliances were rare. As a child Caroline had been horrified by her mother’s daily routine, later saying: ‘… and so the work of the house went on: sweeping, scrubbing, polishing and dusting, all done by hand. No wonder Mother got tired.’ She realised that the grueling burden of housework was causing women to become ill. In 1922 Caroline surveyed women to find which appliances would be most useful to them. The most popular answer was a dishwasher followed by a vacuum cleaner. Her survey led to her proposing an organisation to educate women about the uses of electricity and how to use electrical appliances in the home. The WES weren’t supportive so instead Caroline co-founded the Electrical Association for Women (EAW). The organisation’s slogan was ‘emancipation from drudgery’. Caroline is quoted as saying: ‘We are coming to an age when the spiritual and higher state of life will have freer development, and this is only possible when women are liberated from soul-destroying drudgery … I want every woman to have leisure to acquaint herself more profoundly with the topics of the day.’ As well as giving women careers advice, the EAW campaigned for safety awareness courses, as well as producing magazines and books such as ‘The Electrical Handbook for Women’. Women learned how to wire a plug and visited power stations to see how electricity was produced.

Caroline traveled widely to promote her mission, meeting Albert Einstein and Henry Ford. In the process, she became well known and was featured in a 1920s newspaper article entitled “Miss All-Alone”. Her independent lifestyle, flat-sharing in London and doing her own electrical wiring, was practically unheard of at the time.

During the Second World War, Caroline was the only woman member on a committee that investigated the standards for electrical installations in post-war Britain and instigated changes to the designs of electrical plugs to make them safer. From then onwards, Caroline presided over many committees, including becoming the first woman to chair a government working party and the first female chair of the British Electricity Development Association. Caroline’s achievements were recognised when she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1947. She died 10 years later, and her dying wish was that she be cremated by electricity.

Phyllis Pearsall – inventor of the A-Z

The subject of today’s blog post is an unusual one – a woman who set out to be an artist but her enduring legacy can be seen all over the UK in A-Z street atlases.

Phyllis Gross was born in London in 1906 to wealthy though mismatched parents – a flamboyant Hungarian Jewish immigrant and an Irish-Italian Roman Catholic suffragette. The marriage didn’t last and Phyllis was sent to Roedean, a private boarding school, until her father went bankrupt and she was forced to leave. Her mother had by now remarried and no-one seemed concerned about her welfare so at 14, she went to Paris, working as a tutor and shop assistant, even sleeping rough until she could afford to fund herself to study at the Sorbonne. She travelled around Europe, trying to establish herself as an artist, but only earned a modest living. During this time she married an artist friend of her brothers, Richard Pearsall. But marriage didn’t suit her; after 8 years she left Richard in a Venice hotel room, while he was asleep, and never remarried.

In the 1930s Phyllis’s father, wrote to her, asking her to publish in England a map of the world produced by his company in the United States. By this time he had emigrated after losing the map company he had originally established in London. She reluctantly agreed and learned the technical aspects of printing. One evening, after getting lost on her way to a party, realised that there was a need for a cheap but accurately indexed atlas of the rapidly expanding London. And so the A-Z was born. She researched it herself, walking 3,000 miles to check the names of the 23,000 streets of London, waking up at 5am every day, and working an 18-hour working day. The first issue apparently was missing Trafalgar Square from the index since Phyllis had knocked a shoebox of cards marked ‘T’ out of her office window.

No-one was interested in publishing the resulting street atlas, so she printed 10,000 copies herself. More snubs were to come – Hatchards, Selfridges and Foyles would not see her – but WH Smith agreed to take 1,250 copies, which she delivered herself with a borrowed hand-barrow. Although not the first street map of London – Bartholomew’s Reference Atlas of London and Suburbs had been published two decades earlier – its visual style was appealing and easy to read. The book became a huge success and soon she was taking orders from every railway station in London. Her striking use of colour, orange for A roads and yellow for B roads, was adopted into the language of London taxi drivers, who called them ‘oranges’ and ‘lemons.’ Phyllis set up her own company, The Geographer’s Trust, which still publishes the London A-Z and that of every major British city.

During the Second World War, selling maps to the public was forbidden, but Phyllis worked for the Ministry of Information, producing maps of Europe. She wanted to be a war artist like her brother but instead produced a booklet to boost the morale of women in wartime. Although not published (eventually surfacing as a book entitles Women at War in 1990), it contained drawings of women in a variety of activities, from nursing to munitions factories. However her presence wasn’t always welcome and she was almost arrested for drawing a naval aerodrome when she was meant to be sketching Wrens at work.

It has been claimed since that Phyllis’s story was largely self-invented and that the truth of her map-making was much more mundane – the street plans would have been available at the local authorities. But for me this adds to her charm – a story-teller as well as an artist. She became a millionaire, wrote her autobiography, From Bedsitter to Household Name, and in 2014, her story became a musical on the London stage. But she thought of herself first and foremost as an artist and continued to paint until her death in 1996, a month before her 90^th birthday.

 

Caroline Herschel, housekeeper by day, comet hunter by night

As you know, the theme of my blogs is women doing things that were thought unsuitable. Today’s story is of a woman who ‘played the game’, living a respectable domestic life, but in her spare time discovered comets. And even though she presented each of her findings in deferential, timid letters, she made sure she got the credit she was due.

Caroline Herschel was born in Hanover in 1750, the eighth child of a musician. At the age of ten she contracted typhus, which stunted her growth – she only reached an adult height of four feet three inches – and suffered vision loss in her left eye. Her ageing parents assumed she would never marry and so brought her up to look after them and her brothers. Although she was taught mathematics, it was only to enable her to manage the household expenses.

By contrast, her brother William, led a life free of restrictions and moved to England to pursue his interest in music. When Caroline was 22, following her father’s death, her brother suggested she join him there. She learned to sing and play the harpsichord, and took part in William’s performances. But she struggled to fit in with the local society, and made few friends. William also taught Caroline more maths, but only cautiously – ‘a little algebra for Lina.’ William loved to share his interests with Caroline, and soon she’d become fascinated by his new hobby: astronomy. In 1781 William discovered the planet Uranus, for which he was rewarded with a pension from George III on condition that he moved to Windsor and gave up music. Caroline reluctantly became William’s housekeeper and assistant, later complaining that “I did nothing for my brother but what a well-trained puppy dog would have done, that is to say, I did what he commanded me.” But Caroline was dutiful, putting her brother’s needs first during the day. It was during her solitary nights with her telescope that she first discovered a comet. And despite her humble claims that she wanted to publish her finding to advance astronomy, she was keen to take credit for it, presenting her findings as quickly as possible by writing to an influential friend. Recognising her achievements, George III paid her a modest salary as William’s assistant, making her the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science.

A year later, William married, fracturing the brother-sister relationship and causing Caroline to move into lodgings. This independence allowed Caroline to become well known as a comet hunter and, in some circles, a figure of fun, as this caricature shows.

She discovered seven more comets, each accompanied by her trademark self-effacing letters, using phrases like: “a woman who knows so little of the world ought not to aim at such an honour, but go home, where she ought to be, as soon as possible.” In the case of her eighth comet, she even rode her horse 30 miles through the night, to Greenwich to announce her discovery to the Astronomer Royal, to ensure she would be credited with the discovery.

After her bother’s death in 1822 she returned to Germany and continued to work. She was the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science, to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and to be named an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society. She remained active until her death at the age of 97.

Save

Emmy Noether – mathematical genius

The subject of today’s post is a true unsung heroine – not only is she unknown among the general public but few scientists have heard of her, even though Albert Einstein called her ‘the most significant and creative female mathematician of all time’, and the mathematical theorem she developed became the basis for many important discoveries in physics, including the Higgs boson.

Amalie ‘Emmy’ Noether was in Erlangen, Germany on March 23, 1882, the daughter of a professor of mathematics. While her brother was encouraged to follow in his father’s footsteps, and later became a renowned applied mathematician, Emmy was encouraged towards more feminine pursuits – English, French, cooking and piano. She went to a finishing school and in 1900 gained a certificate to teach English and French. But Emmy couldn’t suppress her love of maths, and, although she was not allowed to formally enrol, was given permission to audit classes at the University of Erlangen, where her father taught and her brother was a student. She took the final exam and did so well she was given the equivalent of a degree. Emmy went on to gain a postdoctoral degree – only the second woman to do so – and earned the respect of all her colleagues. But the university refused to hire her as a professor and for ten years she worked with her father at the Mathematics Institute in Erlangen, and began to publish her work.

During the First World War – a time that distressed pacifist Emmy – she was invited by leading mathematicians Felix Klein and David Hilbert to help them further define one of Einstein’s theories at the University of Gottingen. Faculty members blocked her appointment as a professor, saying: ‘What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?’ Hibbert fought Emmy’s case, protesting: ‘I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her. After all, we are a university, not a bathhouse.’ Emmy was eventually appointed as an unpaid guest lecturer, a position that became more or less permanent. Her spontaneous and enthusiastic teaching style didn’t suit everyone but Emmy gained a reputation as a warm and charismatic teacher, who treated her students as family and listened to their personal problems. Her fiercely loyal students, who became known as Noether’s boys, traveled from as far as Russia to study with her.

At this stage, Emmy began formulating what became Noether’s theorem. I won’t bore you with the details – it is maths after all – but it’s to do with energy and momentum. When her findings were published they caused a sensation, matched only by the later discovery that she was a woman.

Emmy lived for maths. She never married and lived modestly with no interest in possessions or personal vanity. A colleague described a lunch in which she became so engrossed in her discussion of her theorem that she gesticulated wildly while eating and spilled her food constantly, wiping it from her dress, completely unperturbed. She was energetic and happy, and is described as laughing often. But her happiness was short-lived. Following the rise of the Nazis in 1933 she was one of the first Jewish scientists to be fired, and was forced to flee Germany. She traveled to the US, where Einstein helped her find a teaching position in the Bryn Mawr College. Here she taught women for the first time, was highly respected and formed a close friendship with Anna Pell Wheeler, another woman mathematician. But only 18 months after arriving in the US, Emmy had an operation for an ovarian cyst and died of an infection a few days later, aged just 53.

Since then, despite remaining relatively unknown, her recognition has extended beyond the world: a crater of the moon and a minor planet have been named after her. And last year Google created one of their lovely doodles to celebrate her 133^rd birthday.

Alice Herz-Sommer: oldest Holocaust survivor

It’s a while since I wrote a blog post, but recently I discovered a story so uplifting I was inspired to restart. Alice Herz-Sommer was born in Prague in 1903, one of five children, including a twin sister. Her childhood was intellectually stimulating: her parents ran a cultural salon and visitors included Franz Kafka, Gustav Mahler, and Sigmund Freud. At the age of six she started learning piano and by her teens was teaching and performing. She met Leopold Somner, a violinist, in 1931 and married him two weeks later. They led a busy and creative life and had one son, Raphael.

After the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, most of Alice’s family emigrated to Palestine but Alice remained to care for her sick mother, Sophie. In 1942, Sophie was arrested and later killed. Alice channeled her grief into her piano playing, practicing endlessly until her own arrest, together with Leopold and Raphael, in 1943. They were sent to Terezin-Theresienstadt camp where Alice’s musical prowess became her saviour. She later told of her experience:

‘We had to play because the Red Cross came three times a year. The Germans wanted to show its representatives that the situation of the Jews in Theresienstadt was good. Whenever I knew that I had a concert, I was happy. Music is magic. We performed in the council hall before an audience of 150 old, hopeless, sick and hungry people. They lived for the music. It was like food to them. If they hadn’t come, they would have died long before. As we would have.’

In the years of her incarceration, she played more than 150 concerts. Raphael also performed in the children’s opera staged by the Nazis to show ‘normal’ life in the camps. Sadly, Alice was separated from her husband and he died in Dachau, six days before the end of the war.

After the war, Alice moved to Palestine and was reunited with her twin, though many of her family, her husband’s family and all her friends had died. But what makes Alice’s story exceptional is she didn’t let this tragedy define her, instead living a fulfilling life. She once said: ‘I am looking for the nice things in life. I know about the bad things, but I look only for the good things.’

In 1962, she attended the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, commenting: ‘I have to say that I had pity for him. I have pity for the entire German people. They are wonderful people, no worse than others.’

She taught music before moving to London in 1986, to support Raphael in his career as a cellist. Sadly, Raphael died of a heart attack in 2001, aged 64, a devastating blow, but Alice remained positive. She lived alone and for many years had an active daily routine that included swimming, playing the piano for three hours and attending classes at the University of the Third Age.

Alice became the oldest Holocaust survivor and died in 2014, aged 110. She attributed her long life to optimism: ‘I was always ugly. My twin sister was very beautiful. But she was a pessimist and so she died at 74. If you are a pessimist the whole organism is in a tension all the time.’ When asked whether she was afraid of dying, she replied: ‘Not at all. No. I was a good person, I helped people, I was loved, I have a good feeling.’