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The Greatness of Emmy Noether

By Ransom Stephens

You've heard of Albert Einstein but have you heard of Emmy Noether?

Emmy Noether made perhaps the most important discovery in the encyclopedia of human

understanding (for a play-by-play description of Noether’s theorem hit this link).

Emmy Noether was a mathematician and a mentor of Albert Einstein. She worked alongside

and earned the admiration of some of the greatest mathematicians of her time: David Hilbert,

Hermann Weyl, Herman Minkowski, Felix Klein, etc. But since Emmy Noether was female she

traveled a much different road than her peers.

Amalie Noether was born in the Kaiser’s Germany to a Jewish family. Everyone called her

Emmy. In 1900, after receiving her Teaching Certificate – an acceptable intellectual achievement

for a properly demur young lady – she decided to study mathematics. Because she lacked a y-

chromosome, she was not permitted to enroll at the university. In fact, the Academic Senate of

the University of Erlangen recorded that “allowing coeducation would overthrow all academic

order.”

The outstanding theme of Emmy’s life is that she pursued her goals

with single-minded determination and not much fuss.

We all know that it is possible to get as good an education as we desire by simply working

through the great texts in libraries and attending lectures at the finest universities. There are

plenty of empty seats in classes on Algebraic Theory and it would be a rare instructor who would

turn away a warm body with an agile mind. Most of us, though, won’t pursue an education

without the lure of a diploma to document our achievements.


Since Emmy couldn’t register for classes, she attended them without registering. Three years

later, Emmy was permitted to take the grand exams at the end of the degree program. Of course

she excelled, self-motivation of this order is rarely oriented toward unattainable goals.

She then applied to the graduate program and was one of the first women in Germany

accepted in an academic graduate program and, in 1907, was one of the first women to be

awarded a Ph.D.

The natural path of a pure mathematician is to pursue academic research but, of course, the

very idea of women faculty at a major German university would not be entertained for some

years. Emmy responded the way she had as a student: she did mathematical research anyway.

Her Ph.D. dissertation had generated the interest of the faculty at the University of Goettingen

which, at the time, was the center of the mathematical universe. Shortly after her parents died,

she took an unpaid position there and pursued her interests. She taught as a guest lecturer and

lived on her small inheritance – naturally, her older brother inherited the lion’s share of her

parents’ modest wealth.

Emmy developed a unique style of teaching. Rather than deliver passive lectures to a silent

audience, she would propose a mathematical question and invite students to propose solutions.

Unorthodox, to be sure, but soon Emmy could be seen around campus trailed by a group of

students that would come to be known as “Noether’s boys.”

Another problem Emmy faced in developing her academic career: women could not submit

papers to the academic journals.

As Emmy’s life is evidence of the power of resilience, it is also a

testament to the simple pursuit of one’s goals without care for

recognition and reward.


What would come to be known as Noether’s Theorem was published in 1916. Noether’s

Theorem altered our understanding of the Laws of Nature. Prior to 1916, Newton’s laws of

motion (including the alterations required by Einstein’s relativity) and the laws of

thermodynamics and electrodynamics were recognized as empirical facts, expressions of how

things work with no indication of why. By showing that the behavior of matter and forces is

dictated by the geometry of the space and time that they occupy, Noether’s Theorem changed the

way we consider the essential fabric of reality.

That is, Noether’s theorem ties what had been recognized as simple fact, as “how things

are,” to symmetries in nature. For example, that the way things behave does not change with

time requires the first law of thermodynamics: That the energy of a system can neither be created

nor destroyed but can merely change form. Similarly, that the total electric charge in a system

cannot change without input/output from outside the system, results from an arcane

mathematical symmetry (that the behavior of a system of charges is not altered by an overall

phase shift).

Noether’s Theorem still plays a crucial role at the cutting edge of

physics research.

The “Standard Model of Particle Physics” rests on a foundation built of Emmy Noether’s

work. The two major problems being addressed at particle accelerators right now are posed, at

their most primordial level, in terms of Noether’s Theorem.

The search for the Higgs Boson at CERN is predicated on the theory that particles attain

their masses by virtue of a broken symmetry in empty space (called the “Vacuum Expectation

Value”). Similarly, the fact that universe contains so much more matter than it does antimatter
seems to rest on the experimental observation that the laws of nature differ when we swap left

and right.

Among mathematicians, Emmy Noether is recognized along with Newton, Gauss, Fourier,

Leibnitz, as one of the greatest of all time for her work on noncommutative algebra, group

theory, hypercomplex numbers, and her Theory of Ideals in Rings. But few people outside

mathematics and physics departments have heard of her.

In 1919, shortly after the armistice of World War One, Emmy was nominated for a low-level

instructor position called a Privatdozent but the History and Philosophy faculty opposed her:

“What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to

learn at the feet of a woman?” To this, Professor David Hilbert replied: “I do not see that the sex

of the candidate is an argument against her admission as Privatdozent. After all, we are a

university, not a bath house” – which has come to be known as the Bathhouse Quote.

Amalie (Emmy) Noether was a mathematician first and foremost, but she was also a liberal

pacifist and a Jew. This was an unfortunate combination in Germany of the 1930s. She was one

of the first dozen professors to be fired by the Nazis. Her brother, who was also a mathematician,

accepted a position in Russia and urged her to join him. Instead, Albert Einstein convinced the

Rockefeller Foundation to match a grant from the Emergency Committee to Aid Displaced

German Scholars and Emmy was granted a one year instructor position at Bryn Mawr College in

Pennsylvania. At 51 years of age, Emmy accepted her first official, paid, academic position. The

next year, Einstein had to jump through the same political hoops to have the position renewed.

Emmy’s years at Bryn Mawr were probably the happiest of her life.

In 1933, Emmy died of complications after surgery to treat uterine cancer.


That Emmy Noether has never garnered the recognition of her male

peers is a tragedy of culture. That Emmy Noether’s passion was

never daunted nor her achievements slowed by cultural obstacles

and injustices is a testimony to her spirit.

(The author, Ransom Stephens, based the character “Emmy Nutter” in his novel ,The God
Patent, on Emmy Noether. He says, “If Emmy Noether had grown up in Southern California in
the 1980s rather than the Kaiser’s Germany, she’d have been a lot like my Emmy Nutter.”
Contact him: ransom [at] ransomstephens [dot] com)

You are welcome to republish the text of this article without needing further permission,
provided that you attribute the work to its author, Ransom Stephens

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