Einstein's Tutor
The Story of Emmy Noether and the Invention of Modern Physics
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A revelatory story of the woman who made foundational contributions to science and mathematics and persevered in the face of discrimination.
Emmy Noether's mathematical genius enabled Einstein to bring his General Theory of Relativity–the basis of our current theory of gravity–to fruition. On a larger scale, what came to be known as “Noether’s Theorem”—called by a Nobel laureate “the single most profound result in all of physics”—supplied the basis for the most accurate theory in the history of physics, the Standard Model, which forms our modern theory of matter.
Noether’s life story is equally important and revelatory in understanding the pernicious nature of sexual prejudice in the sciences, revealing the shocking discrimination against one of the true intellectual giants of the twentieth century, a woman effectively excluded from the opportunities given to her male counterparts. Noether’s personality and optimistic spirit, as Lee Phillips reveals, enabled her unique genius to persevere and arrive at insights that still astonish those who encounter them a century later.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
German mathematician Emmy Noether (1882–1935) deserves to be remembered alongside Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger for her contributions to physics, according to this persuasive study. Journalist Phillips (Practical Julia) explains that Noether published a groundbreaking 1918 paper that elevated the law of energy conservation "from semi-empirical observation to a mathematical truth" and proved that Isaac Newton's laws of physics remain constant regardless of location and time. It's hard to overstate the significance of these findings, Phillips argues, chronicling how they were combined with quantum mechanics to form the standard model of physics in the mid-20th century and how Noether's correspondence with Albert Einstein helped the latter fill a gap in his theory of general relativity. Examining why Noether has received little credit for her work, Phillips suggests that while prejudice is partly to blame (Nazis forced her out of her academic appointment at the University of Göttingen in 1933 for being Jewish and a woman), Noether was uninterested in promoting her accomplishments, and frequently gifted unpublished work to colleagues and students to put out under their own names. Phillips makes a strong case that Noether is the most important mathematician most people have never heard of, though his valiant efforts to present her breakthroughs in accessible terms can still be tough going. Nonetheless, this gives an overlooked innovator her due.
