Amalie Emmy Noether

Amalie Emmy Noether was a mathematician who advanced abstract algebra at a time when women were not welcome in academia. Noether’s theorem, which explains the connection between symmetries in physical systems and conservation laws, has proven fundamental for mathematical physics. In her later work, she developed a completely new theory of ideals in rings. She is also renowned for developing ascending chain conditions. Such innovations enabled Noether to treat old problems from a new perspective, such as elimination theory and the algebraic varieties.

Born in Germany, Noether was educated at Erlangen University, where she was the second woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics from a German university. She worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen, without pay or title, from 1908 to 1915. In 1915, she joined the Mathematical Institute in Göttingen and worked with Felix Klein and David Hilbert on Einstein’s general relativity theory. In 1918, she proved two theorems that were basic for both general relativity and elementary particle physics. From 1922 until 1933, when she fled Nazi persecution, she was an adjunct professor at the University of Göttingen–the first woman professor in Germany.

During the 1920s Noether did foundational work on abstract algebra, working in group theory, ring theory, group representations, and number theory. Noether’s conceptual approach to algebra led to a body of principles unifying algebra, geometry, linear algebra, topology, and logic. In April 1933, she was denied permission to teach by the Nazi government, and accepted a guest professorship at Bryn Mawr College, which she held from September 1933 until her death in 1935.