The Origin Story Behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics

Re:The Origin Story Behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics by andreareina on Sunday March 19, 2023 @10:04PM (#35226367)

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

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Re:The Origin Story Behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics by wannabedev22 on Monday March 20, 2023 @06:38AM (#35229654)

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.

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