Although now obscure, Göttingen had been the place for mathematical research all throughout the 1800s. Those working at the university were premier mathematicians (and physicists): Gauss, Riemann, Klein, Dirichlet, Noether, Von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Hilbert. (For us non-mathematicians, that’s apparently a very impressive list of names.) The importance of Göttingen and German mathematicians generally is most clearly shown by German becoming an international language for science. Dissertations published in the US and UK often had German titles.
With the Nazi rise to power in the early 1930s many prominent Jews left Germany. Göttingen was still prominent, however. Then came the “great purge.” Academics including Max Born, Victor Goldschmidt, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, Edmund Landau, Emmy Noether, and Richard Courant were expelled or fled from the university. Göttingen became the showpiece for the Nazi crackdown on “Jewish physics.” Only approved Germans were now allowed to teach there.
One of the few remaining faculty from before the purge, David Hilbert, was asked in 1934 “How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?” He replied, “There is no mathematics in Göttingen, anymore.” The center of academic progress moved, virtually overnight, to the United States.
