Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index Previous ( Alphabetically) Next Welcome page
Emmy Noether is best known for her contributions to abstract algebra, in particular, her study of chain conditions on ideals of rings.
Emmy Noether's father Max Noether was a distinguished mathematician and a professor at Erlangen. Women were allowed to study at German universities unofficially and each professor had to give permission for his course. Noether obtained permission to sit in on courses at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen. In 1904 she was permitted to matriculate and in 1907 was granted a doctorate at Erlangen after working under Paul Gordan, one of the leading mathematicians of the day.
Noether taught at Göttingen (1916). David Hilbert and Felix Klein persuaded her to remain at Göttingen and they fought a battle to have her officially on the Faculty. It took them 3 years but in 1919 Noether formally became an academic lecturer.
At Göttingen Noether worked on ideal theory producing an abstract theory which helped draw develop ring theory into a major mathematical topic. Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen (1921) was of fundamental importance in the development of modern algebra. In this paper she gave the decomposition of ideals into intersections of primary ideals in any commutative ring with ascending chain condition. Lasker (the world chess champion) had already proved this result for polynomial rings.
In 1924 B L van der Waerden came to Göttingen and spent a year studying with Noether. After returning to Amsterdam van der Waerden wrote his book Moderne Algebra in two volumes. The major part of the second volume consists of Noether's work.
From 1927 on Noether collaborated with Helmut Hasse and Richard Brauer in work on non- commutative algebras. She also did important work in the theory of invariants, which led to formulations for several concepts of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
From a physics perspective, Emmy Noether's most famous accomplishment is what is sometimes referred to as Noether's Theorem , which proves a relationship between symmetries in physics and conservation principles.
In addition to teaching and research, Noether helped edit Mathematische Annalen . Much of her work appears in papers written by colleagues and students, rather than under her own name.
In 1933 Nazi pressure caused her dismissal from the University of Göttingen. She accepted a visiting professorship at Bryn Mawr College in the USA and also lectured at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton in the USA.
Weyl in his Memorial Address said
Her significance for algebra cannot be read entirely from her own papers, she had great stimulating power and many of her suggestions took shape only in the works of her pupils and co-workers.
References elsewhere in this archive:
Tell me about Emmy Noether's work on General Relativity
Other Web sites:
Agnes Scott College, USA
Clarke University, USA
UCLA, USA
References:
Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index Previous ( Alphabetically) Next Welcome page History Topics Index Famous curves index Chronologies Birthplace Map Mathematicians of the day Anniversaries for the year Search Form Simple Search Form Search Suggestions