Subject: Re: [HM] Emmy Noether
From: William C Waterhouse (wcw@math.psu.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 04 2000 - 15:07:05 EST
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Colin McLarty <cxm7@po.cwru.edu> wrote
(in part):
"I will mention that an extensive search of Math Reviews on-line
found nearly 80% of all references to Emmy Noether are references to this
work, on differential invariants and conservation laws, often by physicists.
Mathematicians are much slower to cite her..."
I think this is just a difference in custom. Consider for instance
the paper "Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen," Math. Ann. 83 (1921), 24-66
(= Collected Papers 354-396). This is a famous and extremely important
paper in which Noether developed the theory of primary decomposition
of ideals in (as we now say) noetherian rings. But no mathematician
really using noetherian rings or primary decompositions is likely
to refer all the way back to this paper. Either the whole topic would
be assumed familiar or the reference would be to a recent textbook
presentation. The basic purpose of a mathematical reference, after all,
is to tell the intended readers where they can (if necessary) look up
proofs of things the author is assuming known.
William C. Waterhouse
Penn State
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