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Women in Mathematics pp 51–66Cite as

Käte Hey and Margaret Matchett—Two Women PhD Students of Emil Artin

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Part of the book series: Association for Women in Mathematics Series ((AWMS,volume 10))

Abstract

The renowned mathematician Emil Artin supervised 31 doctoral students during his career, two of whom were women. His first doctoral student, Käte Hey, completed her PhD at the University of Hamburg in 1927, writing a thesis on the theory of zeta functions of simple algebras. Artin’s second American PhD student, Margaret Matchett, worked with him at Indiana University, graduating in 1946. Matchett also studied zeta functions, redefining these functions with the help of the recently established concept of idèles attached to a number field. Both women conducted doctoral research on topics closely aligned with Artin’s own celebrated work and quite relevant to the contemporary mathematics of the time. This chapter first provides some context for Artin’s life and work, then explores the lives and the mathematics of Hey and Matchett. We conclude by contrasting the research accomplishments and career trajectories of Hey and Matchett with those of Mina Rees, who received her doctorate in 1931.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more on the culturally vibrant atmosphere in fin de siècle Vienna, see the quintessential source [53].

  2. 2.

    Authors’ translation of: “Die Übertragung der Funktionalgleichung der Zetafunktion von Idealklassen in algebraischen Zahlkörpern auf Idealklassen in hyperkomplexen Zahlsystemen ist ein wichtiges und nicht einfaches Problem der Arithmetik dieser Systeme. Die Schwierigkeiten bestehen darin, dass man nur sehr wenig von der Gruppe der Einheiten weiss und dass die Normenformen der Idealklassen unzerlegbar sind, so dass der übliche Weg der Zerlegung in ein Produkt von Gamma-Integralen versagt. Beide Schwierigkeiten werden in vorliegender Arbeit überwunden und die Verfasserin gelangt zu einer Funktionalgleichung von ähnlich einfacher Bauart wie in algebraischen Zahlkörpern. Die Spezialisierungen der Funktionalgleichung auf Quaternionensysteme führt zu schönen und sehr merkwürdigen Klassenzahlformeln, die zeigen, dass die Untersuchung dieser Systeme die Theorie der quadratischen Formen mit vielen anderen Gebieten der Mathematik in Zusammenhang bringt. Die Arbeit war Preisaufgabe der math.–nat. Fakultät für das Jahr 1927. Ich bringe das Prädikat sehr gut in Vorschlag.”

  3. 3.

    This principle states that the isomorphism class of such an algebra A∕k is determined by the “local” companions A p defined over the local fields k p , where p ranges over the primes of the underlying field k. This result, obtained in 1930 [14], is of fundamental significance in the arithmetic of division algebras. For the historical background see [51] and [26]. This important implication of Hey’s work was apparently overlooked by Artin when he wrote his report.

  4. 4.

    Scheuer’s first name is unclear and is possibly Erwin. The authors would like to thank Renate Tobies [61] for this information, which came from a database of high school teachers at German schools in the 1930s.

  5. 5.

    Much of the personal information contained in this section is drawn from [23]. That work relied, in part, on [39].

  6. 6.

    By way of comparison, from 1940–1944, women earned 11.8% of America’s PhDs in mathematics and from 1950–1954, women earned 4.8% of the PhDs [43, p. 5]. Indiana was not a school known for its large numbers of PhDs awarded to women in mathematics in the middle of the century. From 1940–1949, seven schools accounted for over half the PhDs awarded to women: Illinois (9), Catholic (8), Michigan (8), Radcliffe (7), Chicago (6), California/Berkeley (5), and Cornell (4) awarded 4 or more PhDs to women [43, p. 26].

  7. 7.

    For more on the evolution of this committee, sometimes referred to as the Dies Committee after its first chairman Martin Dies, Jr., see [47, chapter III].

  8. 8.

    Fuchs testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on Tuesday, May 15, 1956. Apparently, Fuchs worked with G. Matchett at the National War Labor Board in 1943–1944. See [63, p. 4074] for the reference to Fuchs’ testimony and [63, pp. 4078, 4085–4086, 4094, 4097, and 4110–4103] for references to Gerald and/or Margaret Matchett. The authors extend their generous thanks to an anonymous referee of this paper for calling this source to our attention.

  9. 9.

    Amendment V of the US Constitution reads: “No person …shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” [62]. See [64] for the Matchetts’ testimony. For personal reminiscences by other university professors and teachers, see [25, pp. 426–446, 455–467].

  10. 10.

    The Lab School is a private school founded as a progressive educational institution by John Dewey in 1896.

  11. 11.

    Not all of those associated with the Lab School remembered her so fondly. One of her former students had mixed feelings about Matchett. Since he was a much stronger student than the others in the class, Matchett encouraged him to think about how to teach the subject during class. “I became a very different sort of teacher from the typical American pure mathematician as a result” [1]. As he looked back, however, this student had “very mixed feelings about her. Like most of the Lab school faculty I was close to, she was a communist. I was very alienated from my family, so they had a great influence on me, which I have come to regret.” This particular student especially regretted attending college and graduate school early and investing a number of his early years in political activism. He later viewed his political involvement as “a stupid waste of time.” He still questions why the Lab School faculty “pushed me like that, and I am sure Ms. Matchett had a lot to do with it.”

  12. 12.

    See Chap. 14 in this volume for further information about Rees and her career.

  13. 13.

    In contrast, David Gilbarg, Artin’s other student at IU, wrote a thesis On the structure of the group of p-adic 1-units on a topic that was not nearly as close to Artin’s own area of research as that of Hey and Matchett.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, USA

    Della Dumbaugh

  2. Universität Wien, Wien, Austria

    Joachim Schwermer

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  1. Della Dumbaugh
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Correspondence to Della Dumbaugh .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Redlands, Redlands, California, USA

    Janet L. Beery

  2. Department of Mathematics, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, USA

    Sarah J. Greenwald

  3. Department of Mathematics, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas, USA

    Jacqueline A. Jensen-Vallin

  4. Department of Mathematics, Fordham University, Bronx, New York, USA

    Maura B. Mast

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Dumbaugh, D., Schwermer, J. (2017). Käte Hey and Margaret Matchett—Two Women PhD Students of Emil Artin. In: Beery, J., Greenwald, S., Jensen-Vallin, J., Mast, M. (eds) Women in Mathematics. Association for Women in Mathematics Series, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66694-5_3

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