“Noether, who was Jewish, fled from Germany to the U.S., where she died two years later from cancer”
It wasn’t two years, and it wasn’t cancer. These details are unimportant to the (quite interesting) story, but the error is a sign that the author copies information from unreliable secondary sources, which puts the other facts in the article in doubt.
I wrote to him about the error when the article first appeared, but received no reply.
Noether’s real story is recounted in https://amzn.to/3YZZB4W.
I have an opinion about the editorial style of Quanta that I don't think it's popular here (judging by how often they get upvoted), but I think it's a symptom of that.
They cover science, but the template they consistently follow is a vague title that oversells the premise and then an article filled with human-interest details and appeals to implications. This makes it easy for everyone to follow along and have an opinion, but I feel like science is a distant backdrop and never the actual subject.
In this article, what's the one tidbit of scientific knowledge that we gain? Dedekind's and Cantor's work is described only in poetic abstractions ("a wedge he could use to pry open the forbidden gates of infinity"). When the focus is writing a gossip column for eloquent people, precision doesn't matter all that much.
I find they are good at identifying interesting topics and writing articles that don't deliver. They remind me of Omni magazine (which I subscribed to at one point). The articles aren't even wrong.
The articles are unreadable fluff
I think your opinion is popular here. Quanta is, while better than nothing, universally disappointing. It seems like it would be much easier for them to do a better job -- write less vaguely, fact-check more, assume the reader is a bit more intelligent.
I'm at the library so I checked your book. You said in there:
> However, by October 1933, the issue was straightened out and she was aboard the Bremen, sailing for the United States.
Since she died on 14 April 1935, it was 18 months rather than 2 years.
That sounds like a rather pedantic correction on your part.
That pedanticism is a bad sign and puts your "correction" about the cancer in doubt too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
Is the wikipedia page more or less correct or in need of editing in your view? (Given that you are probably the current world expert on Noether having written the book)
Thank you! After Benj Edwards and Kyle Orland's Ars Technica article they published using AI (while saying they didn't), and all the while their article was about an AI agent publishing a hit piece on Scott Shambaugh (matplotlib maintainer), I feel like I now assume journalists are using AI and things need to be fact-checked just as we do for our AI interactions.
I appreciate hearing about details like this and getting the source directly. I hope Kristina Armitage and Michael Kanyongolo from Quanta Magazine respond and you can update us!
Scott's Blog on Hit Piece: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on... Ars Editor Note: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retractio... Ars Retraction: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-reje...
It’s not like journalists were very accurate before AI. Classic Gell-Mann amnesia
Being "not very inaccurate" is very different from publishing outright fabricated quotes, which is what Ars Technica did and later admitted to: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retractio...
I see what you did there. Turning the page of time, I guess.
Are you citing your own book?
It won’t be the last time.
It's best practice to say something like "Noether's real story is recounted in my book [link]". This both establishes you as a subject matter expert, and stops your comments looking like disingenuous grift.
It's literally cited in his bio, and he's using his real name on HN. It's about as far as grift as it could be. If he's being curt, he's probably (rightfully) frustrated that "journalists" are getting such bottom-of-the-barrel facts wrong.
But surely you would agree that "my book" just wastes less time all around, and doesn't harm the author's message?
A bio is not proper disclosure: it is hidden behind a link that you have to click, and it can be changed at any moment without leaving traces.
> It's about as far as grift as it could be.
Indeed. I don't generally give grifters tips on how to disguise themselves.