Although she was famous as the "mother of modern algebra," Emmy
Noether's life and work have never been the subject of an authoritative
scientific biography. Emmy Noether - Mathematician Extraordinaire
represents the most comprehensive study of this singularly important
mathematician to date. Focusing on key turning points, it aims to
provide an overall interpretation of Noether's intellectual development
while offering a new assessment of her role in transforming the
mathematics of the twentieth century.
Hermann Weyl, her colleague before both fled to the United States in
1933, fully recognized that Noether's dynamic school was the very heart
and soul of the famous Göttingen community. Beyond her immediate circle
of students, Emmy Noether's lectures and seminars drew talented
mathematicians from all over the world. Four of the most important were
B.L. van der Waerden, Pavel Alexandrov, Helmut Hasse, and Olga Taussky.
Noether's classic papers on ideal theory inspired van der Waerden to
recast his research in algebraic geometry. Her lectures on group theory
motivated Alexandrov to develop links between point set topology and
combinatorial methods. Noether's vision for a new approach to algebraic
number theory gave Hasse the impetus to pursue a line of research that
led to the Brauer-Hasse-Noether Theorem, whereas her abstract style
clashed with Taussky's approach to classical class field theory during a
difficult time when both were trying to find their footing in a foreign
country.
Although similar to Proving It Her Way: Emmy Noether, a Life in
Mathematics, this lengthier study addresses mathematically minded
readers. Thus, it presents a detailed analysis of Emmy Noether's work
with Hilbert and Klein on mathematical problems connected with
Einstein's theory of relativity. These efforts culminated with her
famous paper "Invariant Variational Problems," published one year before
she joined the Göttingen faculty in 1919.
