Thursday, October 11, 2007

Campaign for The Noether


I've just delivered my lecture in momentum to my intro physics class and it occurred to me - why is there no derived unit of momentum? So I'm putting in my two-penniesworth that we should call it the noether (With 1 noether = 1 kg m / s) after Amalie Emmy Noether the German-born mathematician and mathematical physicist. There are several reasons for this - first Noether's Theorem is a beautiful expression of how the conservation laws arise from the fundamental symmetries in the universe, one of which is the homogeneity of space from which the conservation of momentum derives. Second there are few units named after women (I assume the Curie is named after Marie and not Pierre) and Emmy Noether's personal story of a woman struggling for recognition in male-dominated European science in the early 20th century is a poignant one.
I realize there are a couple of problems with it - we need a symbol for the unit and we can't use N because Newton already has that but I'm sure we can think of something, she was Jewish so perhaps using the Hebrew equivalent (which I think is נ) although that would probably cause more problems. I think capital P might be the best since p is usually used for momentum. There is also the problem of pronunciation (it's pronounced Ner-ter). Anyway that's my pitch.
Probably not all that important but I like Emmy and I think she should get more recognition!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm convinced, Jimbob!