Kelly Simuel,
9/8/2021
Hermann dated July 9, 1936, Werner Heisenberg expressed his regret at not being able to attend a
conference in Heidelberg to which she had invited him, owing to his enlistment in the German
Wehrmacht. Hermann was deeply disappointed, and in her reply, she condemned Heisenberg’s
sympathy with the National Socialists. For her, any form of cooperation with the Nazis was unacceptable
and was to be considered a betrayal of humanity. Hermann studied mathematics at Gottingen under
Emmy Nether and Edmund Landau, where she achieved her Ph.D. in 1926. Her doctoral thesis, Die
Forage der English violin Schmitt in der Theory der an expression of more than two algebraic terms,
especially the sum of several terms that contain different powers of the same variable (in English "The
Question of Finitely Many Steps in Polynomial Ideal Theory, published in Mathematise Annealed, is the
foundational paper for computer algebra. It first established the existence of algorithms (including
complexity bounds) for many of the basic problems of abstract algebra, such as ideal membership for
polynomial rings. Hermann's algorithm for primary decomposition is still in contemporary use. She also
discussed in depth the question of ‘hidden variables’ (including the first critique of von Neumann’s
alleged impossibility proof) and provided an extensive analysis of Bohr’s notion of complementarity. This
volume includes translations of Hermann’s two most important essays on this topic: one hitherto
unpublished and one translated here into English for the first time. It also brings together recent
scholarly contributions by historians and philosophers of science, physicists, and philosophers and
educators following in Hermann’s steps. Hermann's work places her in the first rank among philosophers
who wrote about modern physics in the first half of the last century. Those interested in the many fields
to which she contributed will find here a comprehensive discussion of her philosophy of physics that
places it in the context of her wider work.