Career
Fritz Noether"s father Max Noether was a mathematician and professor in Erlangen. Fritz Noether was also an able mathematician. Not allowed to work in Nazi Germany for being a Jew, he moved to the Soviet Union, where he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Tomsk.
In November 1937, during the Great Purge, he was arrested at his home in Tomsk by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and sentenced to 25-years imprisonment for being a "German spy".
While in prison, he was accused of "anti-Soviet propaganda", sentenced to death, and shot. Finally, after appealing to Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev, under glasnost, the truth was learned.
In a letter from the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Embassy, the Soviet Government reported that: "On 22 December 1988, the Plenum of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Supreme Court passed a decree Number. 308-88 which determined that Professor Fritz M. Noether had been convicted on groundless charges and voided his sentence, thus fully rehabilitating him." On October 23, 1938 Professor Noether had been found guilty of allegedly spying for Germany and committing acts of sabotage and was sentenced in Novosibirsk to 25 years of imprisonment.
He served time in different prisons.
On September 8, 1941 the Military Collegium of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Supreme Court sentenced Professor F. Noether to death on the accusation of engaging in anti-Soviet agitation. He was shot in Orel on September 10, 1941. His burial place is unknown but there is a memorial plaque in the Gengenbach Cemetery, Germany at the site of his wife"s grave.