Noether's theorem
Teorema de Noether: simetrías y leyes de conservación
- Date
- 1918 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Göttingen, Germany
- Credited to
- Emmy Noether
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
To every continuous symmetry of the laws of physics there corresponds a conserved quantity: time invariance gives energy, spatial invariance gives momentum, rotational invariance gives angular momentum. It explains why conservation laws exist and is the cornerstone of modern theoretical physics.
Noether could not become a tenured professor at Göttingen because she was a woman; Hilbert and Klein assigned her the problem.
What it led to
- Gauge theories and the Standard Model
- Charge conservation as symmetry
- Particle physics based on symmetries
- Understanding of energy in general relativity
- modern theoretical physics
- gauge theories
- abstract commutative algebra
- algebraic geometry
Built on
- Calculus of variations and Euler-Lagrange equation1755
- Theory of Lie groups1873-1874
- General relativity1915
- General relativity (the energy problem)
- Lie group theory
- Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics
Made possible
- Standard Model of particle physics