Emmy Noether

Noether's theorem, proved in 1918, says that every continuous symmetry of a physical system corresponds to a conserved quantity — that conservation of energy follows from the fact that the laws do not change with time, and conservation of momentum from the fact that they do not change with place. Einstein called her work penetrating mathematical thinking, and it underlies how physics has been done ever since. She then largely left physics and rebuilt abstract algebra, giving the subject the axiomatic shape it still has.

Göttingen would not appoint her: the faculty objected that soldiers returning from the war would have to learn at a woman's feet, and Hilbert asked in reply what her sex had to do with it, since the senate was not a bath-house. For four years she lectured under his name. She was finally given an unpaid position, then a small salary, and in 1933 was dismissed by the racial laws — her students met in her flat until she left for Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania. She died there at fifty-three after surgery, and her ashes were placed under the walkway of the college cloisters.