Hacker News Reader

Comment by wannabedev22 | Hacker News Reader

Noether’s lack of recognition has nothing to do with her gender. Her symmetry theorem is known to any undergrad student in physics.

The general public simply doesn’t know about physicists (beyond Einstein and Newton). In fact the general public is more likely to know of Neil deGrasse Tyson than far more influential physicists in the 20th century. Most people aren’t aware of Dirac, von Neumann, Schrödinger, Bohr, Wigner, etc…

View on HN

I think she's actually genuinely underecognized, but that it has to do with that her most notable work is a theoretical result and not a physical theory, and thus something only appreciated by people who read theory, like university students in physics or mathematics.

But how? Literally, everyone in the field knows her.

If you’re talking about the general public, then she is under appreciated but so is pretty much every other physicist too.

I'd suggest this meets the definition of hiding in plain sight.

The general public is interested in female contributions to science on the whole. And they would appreciate knowing about Noether. And the physics community by an large does know her.

But that information has not escaped the relatively esoteric setting of physics education.

On top of that I'd be curious how many of those who know of the symmetry conservation link, know of it as Noether's theorem and how many know Noether was a woman. I bet not much! Just speculation.

Again that would be hiding in plain sight in my book.

NGL when learning Noether’s theorem I thought Emmy was short for something like Emiliano. It wasn’t until long afterwards that I found out that she was a she, and the struggles she had along the way because of that.

At the time I wouldn’t have cared anyway. I was bombarded with so many names of people through equations, experiments, etc that I didn’t care if they were a man, woman, or carrier pigeon. I just cared what the result meant and how I could use it. It’s only after the fact, long after I left academia, that I started to see these people as humans with real lives and stories.

What’s interesting about this discussion is that she had far more results in mathematics than physics. She was a pioneer in commutative algebra and discovered a lot of fundamental theorems and concepts in commutative algebra.

But sadly mathematicians are even less recognized. It is way easier to explain scientific discoveries than it is to explain mathematical discoveries.

Indeed, people in this thread are way overestimating how many average people even know who Euler is.

It’s OK if mathematicians are obscure in the general population. That’s part of the deal when you become a mathematician. I don’t know many footballers either.

I would much rather the general public filled their heads with basic mathematical concepts, rather than the names of mathematicians. As Feynman said (paraphrasing), knowing the name of something is rather useless if you don’t know anything else about it.

Of course, but normal people-- highschoolers, physics teachers in countries where those don't have physics degrees, etc.

> The general public simply doesn’t know about physicists (beyond Einstein and Newton).

I find this odd. We were taught about Rutherford/Bohr and their work in high school - unless the general public if full of people who haven't gone to school or dropped out before high school, they should know these scientists (even if one may not remember the specifics after a long time).

My secondary school classes[1] covered a lot of those names but made no mention of Noether, which you'd think merits at least a "you won't understand it but here's why conservation laws exist". I'm not going to speculate on reasons/motivations but it really does seem to be a huge oversight.

[1] IB curriculum, not exactly a de minimis environment

If you did IB, you may have heard of Schrodinger and Bohr because of their involvement in quantum mechanics and the modelling of the atom model. I'd be shocked if you learned about Wigner for example.

Noether's theorem is a much more difficult result to teach high school students, because you do need some mathematical maturity before learning it. In the UK, you're taught it in a second year undergraduate course in classical mechanics. So it is not an oversight.

Also people here seem to be overstating the influence of Noether as a physicist. Yes, her theorem is a profound result in physics but the majority of her contributions were in pure mathematics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com