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Emmy Noether
Güney Baver Gürbüz

Amalie Emmy Noether (1882-1935) was a German mathematician who made essential contributions to the field of mathematics. She was the eldest of her siblings and wasn’t interested in mathematics in her childhood. Instead, she was keen on learning languages. By the time she graduated, she had been already able to teach English and French. Despite the 

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patriarchal perspective of society, she wanted to study at the Erlander University in which his brother was a student. At that time, women were only allowed to audit classes with the permission of the instructor. She was lectured by important mathematicians like Felix Klein and David Hilbert on the university campus. She intensified her studies in mathematics and earned a Ph.D. degree in 1907. After that, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen for several years. However, since women were largely excluded from academic positions, she wasn’t paid during her employment. In 1915, she was invited to the University of Göttingen’s Mathematics Faculty by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. She helped them there to explore the mathematics behind Albert Einstein’s recently published theory of general relativity. However, due to the rules of the faculty, she was incapable of teaching mathematics under her name. Hence, she lectured for 4 years under Hilbert’s name. During her studies, she discovered the relation known as the symmetries of a physical system and its conservation laws or Noether’s theorem; this relationship has proven to be a key factor in theoretical physics. In 1919, she was able to teach under her own name and receive a  salary. She, then, gathered a small group of students known as Noether's boys. These students traveled from as far as Russia to study with her. Noether's teaching method led her students to come up with ideas of their own, and many went on to become great mathematicians themselves, crediting Noether in their studies. From 1927 to 1933, she focused on abstract algebra which is the set of advanced topics of algebra that deal with abstract algebraic structures rather than the usual number systems. The most important of these structures are groups, rings, and fields. She wrote many research papers regarding her studies and was recognized by many people around the world. However, when Hitler and the Nazis came into power in Germany in 1933, they demanded that all Jews be thrown out of the universities. So, Emmy moved to the United States and became a visiting professor of mathematics at Bryn Mawr College and a lecturer and researcher at Princeton University. She maintained her studies and researches until her death in 1935. Noether's death, caused by an ovarian cyst, surprised nearly everyone as she had told only her closest friends of her illness. After her passing, Einstein wrote that “Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.”

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Emmy Noether made many contributions to the field of mathematics and spent her time studying abstract algebra, with special attention to rings, groups, and fields. Her unique way of approaching to mathematics enabled her to see relationships that most traditional algebra experts could not. She published over 40 papers in her lifetime. She was also an important teacher who inspired her students to make their own contributions to the field of mathematics.

 

References:

“Emmy Noether - Biography.” Maths History, mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Noether_Emmy/.

Emmy Noether, www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/noether.htm.

“Emmy Noether.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 10 Apr. 2021, www.britannica.com/biography/Emmy-Noether. 

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