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Noether's Theorem Revolutionized Physics


Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics.

Einstein’s new theory of gravity seemed to imply that it should be possible to create and destroy energy, a result that threatened to upend two centuries of thinking in physics. David Hilbert, one of the most prominent mathematicians at the time, quickly identified this issue and set out with his colleague Felix Klein to try to resolve this apparent failure of relativity. One made sense of conservation laws in small regions of space, a mathematical feat that would later prove important for understanding the symmetries of quantum field theory.

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