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WonderMathematical physics biography

Emmy Noether proved in 1918 that symmetries in the laws of physics are tied to quantities that stay constant. Because the laws are the same from one moment to the next, energy is conserved; because they are the same in every place, momentum is conserved.

Emmy Noether

SciencePhilosophyBiography

The story behind the card

Noether earned her doctorate at Erlangen in 1907 and then taught there for seven years without pay, as women could not hold university posts. In 1915 David Hilbert and Felix Klein brought her to Göttingen, where the faculty resisted her appointment and she lectured for four years under Hilbert's name. Hilbert and Klein were puzzling over how energy behaves in Einstein's new theory of gravity, and her 1918 paper answered them, giving physics what is now called Noether's theorem. She became a lecturer in 1919 and went on to help found modern abstract algebra. Dismissed by the Nazi government in 1933 because she was Jewish, she moved to Bryn Mawr College in the United States and died after surgery in 1935, aged 53. Einstein wrote that she was the most significant creative mathematical genius since women's higher education began.

Türkçe oku
Emmy Noether 1918'de, fizik yasalarındaki simetrilerin korunan niceliklere bağlı olduğunu kanıtladı. Yasalar bir andan ötekine değişmediği için enerji korunur; her yerde aynı olduğu için de momentum korunur.

Noether 1907'de Erlangen'de doktorasını tamamladı, ardından kadınlar üniversitede kadro alamadığı için orada yedi yıl parasız ders verdi. 1915'te David Hilbert ile Felix Klein onu Göttingen'e getirdi. Fakülte atanmasına karşı çıktı; Noether dört yıl boyunca derslerini Hilbert'in adıyla verdi. Hilbert ile Klein, Einstein'ın yeni kütle çekim kuramında enerjinin nasıl davrandığı sorusuyla uğraşıyordu; Noether'in 1918'deki makalesi bu soruyu yanıtladı ve fiziğe bugün Noether teoremi denen sonucu kazandırdı. 1919'da öğretim üyesi olabildi ve sonraki yıllarda modern soyut cebirin kurucularından biri oldu. Yahudi olduğu için 1933'te Nazi yönetimi tarafından görevinden atıldı, ABD'deki Bryn Mawr Koleji'ne geçti ve 1935'te, 53 yaşında bir ameliyatın ardından öldü. Einstein, onun kadınlara yükseköğrenimin açılmasından bu yana yetişmiş en önemli yaratıcı matematik dehası olduğunu yazdı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Emmy Noether
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