Emmy Noether - Assessment, Recognition, and Memorials

Assessment, Recognition, and Memorials

Noether's work continues to be relevant for the development of theoretical physics and mathematics and she is consistently ranked as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. In his obituary, fellow algebraist B. L. van der Waerden says that her mathematical originality was "absolute beyond comparison", and Hermann Weyl said that Noether "changed the face of algebra by her work". During her lifetime and even until today, Noether has been characterized as the greatest woman mathematician in recorded history by mathematicians such as Pavel Alexandrov, Hermann Weyl, and Jean Dieudonné.

In a letter to The New York Times, Albert Einstein wrote:

In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein 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.

On 2 January 1935, a few months before her death, mathematician Norbert Wiener wrote that

Miss Noether is ... the greatest woman mathematician who has ever lived; and the greatest woman scientist of any sort now living, and a scholar at least on the plane of Madame Curie.

At an exhibition at the 1964 World's Fair devoted to Modern Mathematicians, Noether was the only woman represented among the notable mathematicians of the modern world.

Noether has been honored in several memorials,

• The Association for Women in Mathematics holds a Noether Lecture to honor women in mathematics every year; in its 2005 pamphlet for the event, the Association characterizes Noether as "one of the great mathematicians of her time, someone who worked and struggled for what she loved and believed in. Her life and work remain a tremendous inspiration".
• Consistent with her dedication to her students, the University of Siegen houses its mathematics and physics departments in buildings on the Emmy Noether Campus.
• The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) operates the Emmy Noether Programme, a scholarship providing funding to promising young post-doctorate scholars in their further research and teaching activities.
• A street in her hometown, Erlangen, has been named after Emmy Noether and her father, Max Noether.
• The successor to the secondary school she attended in Erlangen has been renamed as the Emmy Noether School.

In fiction, Emmy Nutter, the physics professor in "The God Patent" by Ransom Stephens, is based on Emmy Noether

Farther from home,

• The crater Nöther on the far side of the Moon is named after her.
• The 7001 Noether asteroid also is named for Emmy Noether.