The two mathematical careers of Emmy Noether

Abstract

The received view of Emmy Noether as the champion of David Hilbert’s new style of algebra is not false (as you can see from the fact that Hermann Weyl urged this view). But it seriously understates Noether’s mathematical ambition and her influence on young mathematicians around her and on all of mathematics since. In fact Noether was an internationally recognized mathematician by age 30, teaching unofficially in Erlangen, before she took up the new algebra or began any of her work that is remembered today. That first career, though it used quite old-fashioned mathematics even by the standards of Erlangen, gave her insights she carried on throughout her very different, distinctively 20th century career in Göttingen and Bryn Mawr.