Robert McNees
A short thread on Emmy Noether and giving credit.
Felix Klein gave a lecture at the Mathematical Society of Göttingen #OTD in 1918. The title was “On Hilbert’s first note on the foundations of physics."
Klein included excerpts from letters in which he and Hilbert give priority to Emmy Noether for her results on conservation of energy in general relativity.
Robert McNees
Noether’s contributions were not always appreciated, because some of them happened outside of formal publications, in consultation with more senior researchers, or without the fanfare of a well-known scientist announcing a result at a major meeting. (The proximate causes here were of course sexism and antisemitism.)
But her peers knew.
Robert McNees
Klein was very clear in a letter to Hilbert:
"You know that Miss Noether advises me continually regarding my work, and that in fact it is only thanks to her that I have understood these questions.”
He explains how Noether obtained the result they are discussing a year earlier.
Robert McNees
He goes on to say that he read her manuscript on the subject, and notes
"She simply did not set it out as forcefully as I recently did at the Mathematical Society.”
Klein is saying, as plainly as possible, that Noether established a result that is being credited to him.
Robert McNees
Hilbert responds “I fully agree,” adding that he had also received help from Noether the previous year.
He closes his letter with a conjecture about the origin of energy conservation in general relativity, adding "It would be good to produce the mathematical proof."
You can probably guess what comes next.
Robert McNees
In a reprint of his lectures, Klein notes that the proof was provided by Emmy Noether in her famous 1918 paper "Invariante Variationsprobleme," which appeared six months later.
Sometimes on the bird site I would get replies or DMs suggesting that Noether’s importance is overstated, a revisionist history meant to appease folks concerned with equality and social justice.
That's not correct. She did essential work before her colleagues but didn’t get credit until much, much later.
Robert McNees
It’s easy enough to verify this. Hilbert and Klein couldn't have been more plain about it in their correspondence.
References:
[1] “The Noether Theorems: Invariance and Conservation Laws in the Twentieth Century,” Yvette Kosmann-Schwarzbach (Springer, 2011)
[2] “Einstein, Hilbert, and the Theory of Gravitation,” Jagdish Mehra (D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1974)
Robert McNees
@BAPearlmutter @rmathematicus I meant the causes over the course of her career, not that specific year.
BAPearlmutter
@rmathematicus @mcnees Wow, a proper expert: cool! I know she was kicked from Göttingen in 1933 due to antisemitic Nazi policies, and I'd heard stories that she allowed some Nazi-supporting students into a reading group held in her house earlier than that. But perhaps that didn't extend all the way back into the 20s? I'd be curious if you have any further details about that.
BAPearlmutter
@rmathematicus @mcnees Antisemitism was rife there at the time, albeit not yet quite so murderous. Also in the USA, to be fair.
Thony Christie
@BAPearlmutter @mcnees Small piece of information, I live in Emmy Noether's home town, am a historian of mathematics and something of a Noether expert.
Emmy did not identify as Jewish and in the middle of the second decade of the 20th century she would not have been and in fact was not the target of anti-semitism
Thony Christie
@mcnees At that point in time, not antisemitism with regards to Emmy Noether
Thony Christie
Then your post was ambiguous, sorry
Robert McNees
@rmathematicus @BAPearlmutter Yes, it was. Just wrote too quickly.
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