| Frieda Nugel | |
| Birth Date: | 18 June 1884 |
| Birth Place: | Cottbus, German Empire |
| Nationality: | German |
| Field: | Mathematics |
| Death Place: | Bad Godesberg, West Germany |
Frieda Nugel (1884–1966) was a German mathematician and civil rights activist, one of the first German women to earn a doctorate in mathematics. She earned her PhD at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1912, under the supervision of August Gutzmer.
Nugel was the fourth of six children of a musician, Friedrich Arthur Nugel. She was born on 18 June 1884 in Cottbus. She studied at the Mädchen-Mittelschule (Girl's Middle School) there until 1901, then began studies at the Höhere Mädchenschule (Girl's High School) until 1906. Shortly after, she completed the state teaching examination in Berlin. Returning to Cottbus, she worked as a private tutor for the Von Werdeck family, before taking the final level of German mathematics exams under the tutelage of Rudolf Tiemann.
In 1906 Nugel became certified as a teacher, and began working as a private instructor for the Werdeck family near Cottbus. After finishing her studies at the Luisenstädtische Oberschule (High School) in 1907, she started university studies in Berlin. She moved to Munich in 1909, and moved again to Halle in the same year. She took a position as a teacher at a girls' school in Cottbus, but taught there only for two years, until her marriage to Louis Hahn in 1914. The first of their four children was born in 1915. She moved with her husband to Altena and then Emden, her husband's home town, where he worked at his family's newspaper business. She taught intermittently at two schools there from 1914 to 1918, during World War I, but from then until 1927 she taught only privately, also publishing works promoting civil rights and better education for women.
In 1927, after the collapse of her husband's newspaper business, Nugel obtained a part-time position at a school in Emden. By 1930 her position there had become permanent, albeit at a smaller salary than the men in her school. The subjects she taught during this time included mathematics, physics, and German. Between 1939 and 1945 she witnessed the bombing of the city of Emden, as part of WWII, and the school was forced to move to Bad Wildungen; her two sons served as officers in the war, and were both killed in 1944.
Nugel retired in 1945 at the age of 61. Her husband died of an illness in 1952. In 1955, she moved to Bad Godesberg in order to connect with her remaining family. In 1962, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Halle gave her a "Golden Doctoral Diploma" award, on the 50th anniversary of her 1912 dissertation. She died on 6 November 1966 in the town of Bad Godesberg.