“Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.” ~ Albert Einstein
If you ask anyone to name a famous woman mathematician, the names that come to mind will usually be Hypatia, Ada Lovelace, Emilie du Chatelet, or Maria Agnesi, if they can name any at all. I must admit that these women were the ones who attracted my attention as well when I started reading the history of mathematics. Each of these has something that attracts us apart from mathematics: Hypatia’s brutal death, Ada’s famous father, Emilie’s famous lover, or Maria’s piety. Yet with each of these women there are debates about how much original work they actually did and how much was primarily building on the work of others. There is no doubt that they were all brilliant and deserve to be remembered, but there is one who undoubtedly did work that was so original that it changed the way we do mathematics and is virtually unknown outside of specialist circles: Emmy Noether.
Emmy Noether made groundbreaking contributions to theoretical physics and abstract algebra. She developed several formulations to support Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, in fact he wrote to David Hilbert, “You know that Frl. Noether is continually advising me in my projects and that it is really through her that I have become competent in the subject.” The principle behind Noether’s Theorem is foundational to quantum physics proving that the laws of physics are independent of time and space. And yes you can even blame her for “New Math,” her approach, just very, very, watered down. In spite of all of this, she worked almost her entire life without pay because she was a woman.
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