"Noether". Mathematical Institute
The term has barely begun, and already Oxford has seen two plays about wrongly overlooked women from history. Last week, at the Schwarzman Centre, Burning Down the House made the case for Laura Kieler, a wannabe playwright whose life story was appropriated by Henrik Ibsen for A Doll’s House . Now, at the Mathematical Institute, we welcome back Esme Somerside-Gregory’s play Noether , about the great, and underappreciated, German mathematician, Emmy Noether, who battled sexism, Nazis and cancer in that order. There’s a pleasing, geometrical symmetry about Noether playing at the Maths Institute. It was here that it was first performed back in February. Since then it’s been to Edinburgh, and visited other universities as part of the OUDS National Tour, before finding its way back to Lecture Theatre 2 for one final show, still with the same dedicated cast of mostly first-time actors. Like Burning Down the House , Noether is the result of much research by its author. But Somerside-Gregory...
