Godel's wife

[Alfred001]

Anyone else find it strange that Godel's wife was apparently a dancer? You'd figure she might have been a fellow academic or some other kind of professional. Mathematicians don't typically marry people from showbusiness.

Does anyone know of any online sources that give info on this, seemingly, unlikely pairing?

[swansont]

I have a former colleague who is married to a dancer. So no, I don't find it strange, nor is the fact that Gödel married a dancer inconsistent with it being atypical, if it in fact is "atypical" (not sure what "typical" would be)

[Alfred001]

Well, I would guess typical would be a professional woman, if not another academic. Doctor, lawyer, businesswoman, something of that sort.

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, Alfred001 said:

Well, I would guess typical would be a professional woman, if not another academic. Doctor, lawyer, businesswoman, something of that sort.

That is much rarer than you think. It has become more common recently. In the 80s perhaps a third of all men with a graduate degree were married to someone with the same level of education. Around 2010ish it has doubled to roughly 60%. But with the rise of higher education among women, the reverse is also true. I.e. roughly 60% of women with higher degrees are married to spouses with similar levels of attainment.

In Godels time women with higher degrees were even rarer and women were less likely to be expected to be professionals (and were often actively inhibited to do so). Also often someone pursuing competitive careers including an academic one, often benefit from a partner who is not a full-time professional themselves and thus can take care of pretty much everything else. This, too was more important in former times than now. In other words, what you describe as typical, was, especially in Godel's time, rather rare.

[swansont]

16 hours ago, Alfred001 said:

Well, I would guess typical would be a professional woman, if not another academic. Doctor, lawyer, businesswoman, something of that sort.

Women have not been historically well-represented in the professional communities, as CharonY points out.  (anecdotally, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, the last woman to earn a Nobel in physics before this week, was not in a paid physics position for most of her professional career prior to the Nobel) A lot of science was mostly men-only for quite a while, and men are still over-represented in a number of fields.