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Einstein’s Tutor

The book cover

On Emmy Noether’s birthday in 2022 I announced that I was writing a book about her and the impact of Noether’s Theorem, and that it would be available in September of 2024. I’m happy to say that all went well. PublicAffairs brought out the hardcover and electronic versions on September 10th.

Buy now.

News

6/12/2024 9:50 My interview on TalkRadio about “Einstein’s Tutor”: I talked with Paul Ross for a quarter hour about my book on a UK radio station. You have to make a free account to listen. My bit starts at 1:39. The host was charming and gracious and had clearly read the book.
05/12/2024 15:11 I talk about Einstein’s Tutor on TalkRadio in the UK: On Friday, the 6th of December at 02:30 UTC I will be talking about my book with Paul Ross on UK’s TalkRadio.
12/10/2024 12:44 Brief review of Einstein’s Tutor in Nature: “Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.”
1/10/2024 14:54 The Page 99 Test: Einstein’s Tutor: My book is featured at the Campaign for the American Reader.
14/9/2024 8:39 Einstein’s Tutor: A review of my book in Science: “Phillips’s writing shines in his exhaustively researched historical narrative…Accessible to both nonscientists and trained physicists…ultimately, everyone will learn something new from this book.”
10/9/2024 15:24 Einstein’s Tutor sold out on Amazon: My book about Emmy Noether and the emergence of modern physics went on sale today. Shortly after midnight, Amazon reported the book as out of stock: the pre-orders wiped out their inventory.
6/9/2024 15:26 ‘Einstein’s Tutor’ Review: Emmy Noether in Space and Time: An intelligent review of Einstein’s Tutor is up at the Wall Street Journal.
31/08/2024 12:10 Three Translations for Einstein’s Tutor: As of today we have contracts to translate the book into Russian (with distribution in Russia and the CIS), Polish (with worldwide distribution), and Simplified Chinese (with distribution in Mainland China).
1/8/2024 11:07 Einstein’s Tutor is one of the Fall’s top titles: According to the Library Journal.
18/7/2024 11:46 Einstein’s Tutor: The Story of Emmy Noether and the Invention of Modern Physics: A notice in Publishers Weekly book picks (“what we’re reading”).
13/7/2024 0:15 Review of Einstein’s Tutor on Netgalley: This anonymous reviewer has nice things to say about my book.
12/7/2024 23:48 The Next Big Idea Club’s September 2024 Must-Read Books: Einstein’s Tutor is on The Next Big Idea Club’s list of Must-Read Books for September 2024.
11/7/2024 16:07 Einstein’s Tutor to be offered by the Bookspan Book Club: It will be a main selection in Bookspan’s Library of Science and a featured alternate in their History Book Club and Military Book Club.
9/7/2024 16:26 25% off Einstein’s Tutor: Get a discount if you preorder now at the publisher’s site. Exclusions apply. Offer ends 07/17/2024.

Emmy Noether

She was a mathematical genius born into a society where women were not permitted to study or teach in universities: Germany at the turn of the 20th century. Consumed with a passion for math, she audited courses, then enrolled when the law changed to allow it, getting her PhD in 1907. She was not allowed to teach officially until the end of WWI, when she finally became a professor. Noether, a Jew, was removed from that job by the Nazis in 1933 and escaped to the United States.

Noether was one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century, remaking and inventing entire fields of mathematics. According to current research mathematicians, her methods of thinking and teaching permeate the entire discipline.

Noether’s Theorem

Noether gave crucial assistance to Albert Einstein, guiding him to the completion of his General Theory of Relativity. This led to her publication in 1918 of what we now call Noether’s Theorem. This result, relating symmetries with conservation laws, provides the modern definition of energy and explains why energy is not conserved in the universe as a whole. Many scientists describe it as the most important result in all of theoretical physics. In the same work Noether invented the concept of the gauge theory; she also created the modern formulation of representation theory. The Standard Model, the current theory of the elementary particles, is an application of these ideas. Noether’s work, therefore, provides the foundation for most of fundamental modern physics.

The Book

Einstein’s Tutor tells the story of Emmy Noether’s life, describes the role of her work in the history of science, and explains why you haven’t heard of her. It’s aimed at a general audience and contains only two tiny equations, both of which you’ve seen before.

Using original research, I describe details of Noether’s life and death that have never appeared before, and trace the passage of the ideas in her Theorem from its creation down to the present day, where it’s escaped from physics and is being applied in biology, economics, quantum computing, and more.

Einstein’s Tutor was released on September 10th, 2024. It’s available at all decent bookstores and online retailers, including Amazon.

More Reading

The Symbolic Universe: Geometry and Physics 1890-1930: “Physics was transformed between 1890 and 1930…examines the reception of Einstein’s theory of special relativity…describes Einstein’s path to formulating general relativity…provides the first detailed account of Emmy Noether’s work on physics.”
Emmy Noether in Bryn Mawr
The Mighty Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of
Physics from Symmetry: An interesting textbook “that derives the fundamental theories of physics from symmetry.” The author’s story and more about the book at http://physicsfromsymmetry.com/.
Math teacher on Emmy Noether’s erasure from math history: In 2 tweets, David Wees recounts how his abstract alegebra classes scrubbed mention of EN from history of the subject: “I took two courses on rings, fields, and algebras and never learned anything about Emmy Noether”; and a follow-up tweet: “She was erased from my the history included in my abstract algebra courses at UBC. It was all Galois & Abel.”
The Hasse - Noether Correspondence 1925 -1935: “English Translation with Extensive Commentary…Detailed comments clarify the content of the letters in their historical content…Can be used as an introduction to modern class field theory… Illustrates the evolution of mathematical concepts and structures”.
Einstein’s War
Arch and scaffold: How Einstein found his field equations: “In his later years, Einstein often claimed that he had obtained the field equations of general relativity by choosing the mathematically most natural candidate. His writings during the period in which he developed general relativity tell a different story.”
Emmy Noether and Hermann Weyl
Emmy Noether in Erlangen and Göttingen
The Life and Times of Emmy Noether: Contributions of Emmy Noether to Particle Physics
Noether’s Theorem and Machine Learning: Another surprising application.
A short review on Noether’s theorems, gauge symmetries and boundary terms: This widely-cited paper came out in 2016 but I just found out about it (too late to mention it in the book): “This review is dedicated to some modern applications of the remarkable paper written in 1918 by E. Noether. [I]n a single paper, Noether discovered the crucial relation between symmetries and conserved charges as well as the impact of gauge symmetries on the equations of motion. Almost a century has gone since the publication of this work and its applications have permeated modern physics. Our focus will be on some examples that have appeared recently in the literature. This review is aim[ed] at students, not researchers.” Also at https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.03616.
A Brief Review Noether’s Theorems and their Application to General Relativity
Emmy Noether – Mathematician Extraordinaire
A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design
Gesammelte Abhandlungen - Collected Papers (English and German Edition)
Emmy Noether’s Wonderful Theorem
The greatest physics theorem you’ve never heard of
XKCD on Emmy Noether (and Marie Curie)
Having your Pi and eating it - talking maths with Eugenia Chen: Interview with the mathematician and educator.
The Noether Theorems: ‘good and at times reads like a spy novel: “Who Knew What, and When”.’ According to a comment at https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/emmy-and-the-habilitation/
Emmy Noether and The Fabric of Reality: Youtube video of a Google Tech Talk by Ransom Stephens, author of “The God Patent”.
Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact
E. Noether’s Discovery of the Deep Connection Between Symmetries and Conservation Laws
Grete Hermann—Between Physics and Philosophy
Proving It Her Way
Noether’s Theorem in a Nutshell: John Baez’s neat demonstration of a special case of Noether’s Theorem.
Making Mathematics in an Oral Culture: Göttingen in the Era of Klein and Hilbert
Emmy Noether: Very good panel discussion.
Mathematicians under the Nazis
Refugee mathematicians in the United States of America, 1933–1941: Reception and reaction
Emmy Noether: Poet of Logical Ideas: Passionate biographical essay with interesting discussion of the physics.
Noether’s Theorem and Arthur Eddington: The survival of the former in physics culture owes a debt to the latter.
Grace Chisholm Young: gender and mathematics around 1900: Contains an interesting observation that pure mathematics may be less threatening to men than empirical sciences, and therefore a more welcoming field for women. Also notes that there were more female mathematicians, proportionally, in 1900 than in 1960.
“Jewish Mathematics”?: This subtly written and argued essay by James Propp makes some points similar to ones in Einstein’s Tutor: notions of racial differences in styles of mathematical thought may be quaint and curious when Felix Klein expounds them, but they are deadly ideas.

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