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Thursday: April 21, 2005

A Small Mystery Solved?

Filed under: — site admin @ 1:38 PM GMT-0500

Today’s National Review Online includes an interesting article by John Derbyshire about the great German mathematician Emmy Noether. Derbyshire admits to puzzlement on one point: “Albert Einstein wrote her obituary for the New York Times, though for reasons I don’t know it was printed as a letter to the editor.” Call me cynical, but I’m thinking they might well have been legally obligated to pay him some standard by-the-word rate for a formal obituary, while a letter to the editor would fill space and attract readers at no cost to the Times.