It’s Women’s History Month, and so all over my (all-girls) school, there are posters and books and emails and announcements and so on highlighting various great women. And there’s an emphasis on women in STEM fields. Some of the names, like Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace, are quite familiar, and deservedly so. But you almost never hear about Emmy Noether. She’s one of the greatest mathematical physicists of all time, of any gender. Literally all of modern theoretical physics is based fundamentally on her symmetry theorems. Why isn’t she held up as more of a role model?
I’ve wondered that too: my theory is that math isn’t as viscerally interesting as scientific discoveries.
Speaking of which, I sometimes think that if Lise Meitner had joined the Manhattan Project and thus took part in the more immediately understandable and intriguing atomic bomb, then she would have been tied with a lot of other men and women for the second most famous scientist of the 20th century instead of also in a lower tier status (fame-wise.)
I mean, according to Wikipedia, she worked on
the study of the non-commutative algebras, their representations by linear transformations, and their application to the study of commutative number fields and their arithmetics
That is almost complete gibberish to probably 99.9 percent of the population. Might as well say she is important because she advanced the guggling of snubwonkers in isoltated bingledags. Much more likely to remember someone who found lots of fossils or discovered Radium, something that doesn’t require extensive explanation to even begin to grasp.
Definitely. I think she should be considered as one of the four parents of modern physics, along with Einstein, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger.
IMHO part of why she isn’t as well know is that Noether’s theorem isn’t taught (or at least it wasn’t in the classes I took) in high school and undergrad level physics classes. It isn’t just Noether herself that isn’t well known, it’s her theorem. We all (or at least those of us who took even high school level physics) know about Schrodinger and his cat, Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle, and Einstein’s relativity. But even as someone who’s been interested in physics since high school, I didn’t know about Noether’s theorem until a few years ago.
Unfortunately, unlike Lovelace and Curie, Noether didn’t get much public recognition in her lifetime, so modern discussions of her work can’t revive her fame - they have to start from zero. That’s why the recent book about her is titled “Einstein’s Tutor.” I gave a talk about conservation laws a few years ago, and talked about her.
This would be my guess, as well as advanced mathematics being less directly comprehensible to laypeople.
There might also be a factor of which female scientists and researchers had their stories publicized (and due credit given to them), as well as whether they had a role in something which even laypeople understand (or at least have heard of): @Chronos mentiones Curie and Lovelace, who were a pioneer in research on radiation, and a key figure in the development of what became computers. Both of those are areas which a layperson would at least have an inkling about.
And that “given due credit” has probably been really important, too. Compare with Rosalind Franklin, whose research was critical in the discovery of the structure of DNA, but whose role was downplayed by Crick and Watson.
Yeah, mathematicians tend not to get “household word” status as readily as other kinds of breakthrough-makers in STEM fields. How many people have heard of Andrew Wiles, the solver of the centuries-old problem of proving Fermat’s Last Theorem?
And the Last Theorem is quite jargon-free and easy to understand, on a superficial popularization level at least, compared to most long-standing mathematical mysteries.
There are two issues here. As claimed in the OP she was the leading mathematical physicist of the 20th century. Even general relativity required her theorem relating physical invariants to symmetries to be completed. All physicists seem to know this, but no one else. In fact, it is something I learned only in the past ten years or so, since I am not a physicist.
In addition to that she was a first rate mathematician, arguably second only to Hilbert in the first half of the 20th c (Emil Artin might disagree). We all learned about Noetherian rings which gave a fuller explanation of results of invariant theory. She also introduced groups into algebraic topology. Previously, the algebraic invariants were in terms of what are called Betti numbers and torsion numbers and she combined them into one single object called the homology group. She is said to have remarked something like “What are these Betti numbers, c’est une bêttise [stupidity]?”
Owing to gender discrimination, her first actual formal professorship was at Bryn Mawr College when she came to the US as a refugee. Unfortunately, she died of cancer within two years.
This of course does nothing to answer the OP. One of the most important mathematicians and physicists of the 20th c. and she gets almost no recognition.
Mysteriously, at no point while earning my degree in physics did I hear her mentioned. Albert Einstein wrote this letter upon her death:
To the Editor of The New York Times:
The efforts of most human beings are consumed in the struggle for their daily bread, but most of those who are, either through fortune or some special gift, relieved of this struggle are largely absorbed in further improving their worldly lot. Beneath the effort directed toward the accumulation of worldly goods lies all to frequently the illusion that this is the most substantial and desirable end to be achieved; but there is, fortunately, a minority composed of those who recognize early in their lives that the most beautiful and satisfying experiences open to humankind are not derived from the outside, but are bound up with the development of the individual’s own feeling, thinking and acting. The genuine artists, investigators and thinkers have always been persons of this kind. However inconspicuously the life of these individuals runs its course, none the less the fruits of their endeavors are the most valuable contributions which one generation can make to its successors.
Within the past few days a distinguished mathematician, Professor Emmy Noether, formerly connected with the University of Göttingen and for the past two years at Bryn Mawr College, died in her fifty-third year. In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger generation of mathematicians. Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward logical beauty spiritual formulae are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.
Born in a Jewish family distinguished for the love of learning, Emmy Noether, who, in spite of the efforts of the great Göttingen, Hilbert, never reached the academic standing due her in her own country, none the less surrounded herself with a group of students and investigators at Göttingen, who have already become distinguished as teachers and investigators. Her unselfish, significant work over a period of many years was rewarded by new rulers of Germany with a dismissal, which cost her the means of maintaining her simple life and the opportunity to carry on her mathematical studies. Farsighted friends of science in this country were fortunately able to make such arrangements at Bryn Mawr College and at Princeton that she found in America up to the day of her death not only colleagues who esteemed her friendship but grateful pupils whose enthusiasm made her last years the happiest and perhaps the most fruitful of her entire career.
Albert Einstein,
Princeton University, May 1, 1935.
The question of what constitutes a role model aside, who in the fields of (at least) mathematics or physics has not heard of Emmy Noether?
I’ll bet you have heard of conservation of momentum. Perhaps her name has slipped some teachers’ minds?
Personally, I do not remember studying any physics or mathematics where, e.g., Noether’s Theorem did not come up— however, that does not mean I knew anything about her personal life or whether she should, or should not, be considered a role model. Maybe she was an asshole? Maybe she loved puppies and kittens? All we knew is she was some abstract person who did all of this obviously great work, unless we later went out and looked into her biography.
Gender discrimination was, of course, a well-known problem and she was hardly the only woman, let us even say distinguishedly brilliant woman, to have to deal with that bullshit.
I dispute that mathematicians aren’t as well known amongst a generally culturally literate, layman audience. I’d say, for example, that Godel, Riemann, Erdos, Ramanujan, Cantor, Fermat, Poincaire are all fairly recognized names from 1800s onward. If you include people also famous for computational mathematics, there’s Turing, Von Neumann, Hilbert, Dijkstra, Shannon, Boole, Nash. If you go back to the 15th century, then you add Pascal, Fermat, Leibniz, Bernoulli, Gauss, Euler.
About the only contemporary mathematicians I’d probably put on this list are Andrew Wiles, Grigori Perelman and Terrance Tao.
But all of these, I would expect a moderate level Jeopardy player or crossword solver to know.
I will say that I consider myself to be reasonably culturally literate, as well as being generally interested in the sciences (though I am not a scientist). I recognize about 2/3 of the older names you list, though don’t know much more than the names for most of them.
I’ve never heard of the three contemporary ones you name.
Which is, I think, a higher bar than “a generally culturally literate, layman audience.” A good Jeopardy player needs to have a very well-rounded – and deep – knowledge base, and that goes well beyond “generally culturally literate,” IMO.
My sense is, from reading about her only on Wikipedia, is that if I were the vast majority of people I’d consider her a great human being. She showed extreme collegiality toward her fellow mathematicians and so as a regular joe schmoe I see no reason to doubt that this extended to her regular life.
This collegiality extended toward her students, and her lectures became more of an impromptu mathematical gaming session where they worked on a problem together. But if I were a below average mathematician and I came there to learn mathematics, how would I learn enough to eventually contribute?
I’d say recognizing 2/3rds means you’re at the appropriate calibration point I set. If I showed you a fuller list of names, you’d probably recognize 4 or 5 more and someone else at your equivalent level would probably also recognize 2/3rds of the above list and 4 or 5 more of the fuller list but they’d be a different 4 or 5 because of the quirks of our own individual paths through life.
The question is, do you recognize substantially more from any other scientific field under the same standards? I’d wager you probably know 2 - 3x more physicists but probably around the same amount or fewer of chemists and biologists.
By “moderate Jeopardy player”, I didn’t mean someone who appears on the show but a regular viewer watching at home who probably gets 40 - 60% of the answers correct with some generous fudging. A moderate crossword solver would be someone who could consistently knock out a NYT Sunday - Wednesday and is about at a 75% on a Thursday-Saturday.
How about a standard of “the kind of person who makes Women in STEM posters”? These are people who are actively looking for accomplished women. They’re doing their research. And yet, as I mentioned in my OP, they always seem to miss Noether.
I suspect that it’s at least partly self-perpetuating: The people who make these posters decide whom to include by looking at who’s on other peoples’ posters. But someone still had to make the original posters, and the posters don’t all show exactly the same set of people, so someone has to be doing at least some independent research.
As proven by Michelson and Morley. (Physicist joke)
That joke is genius!
Sure, but it isn’t the conservation of momentum that she’s known for. When conservation of momentum was taught, the discovery was attributed to Newton. Her accomplishment is discovering how that conservation relates to the symmetry of space, along with all the other symmetries and pseudo-symmetries (my understanding is that time and conservation of energy are the associated pair, and that just like time isn’t truly symmetrical, energy is not truly conserved). Those relationships weren’t taught in any of the physics classes I took.
I’ve had dinner with Andrew Wiles, and at least recognize the names of all but one of those mathematicians. And I’ve heard of Noetherian rings. But i know almost nothing about her, and don’t know what Noetherian rings are, nor what she did in mathematics or physics.
I certainly think she’s under-recognized.
While I’ve heard of all of these, and can even discuss their work at least vaguely, there’s a danger of this XKCD applying
I’ll admit that during Shannon’s lifetime, he was pretty well known - “information theory” was apparently a cultural catchphrase like “relativity” had been a few decades earlier (see also “cybernetics”)