The Woman Who Fixed Einstein's Mistake

2025-04-14

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Why does energy disappear in General Relativity? 👉 Use code VERITASIUM to get 50% off your first monthly KiwiCo Crate! https://www.kiwico.com/VERITASIUM

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A huge thank you to Prof. Geraint Lewis, Prof. Melissa Franklin, Prof. David Kaiser, Elba Alonso-Monsalve, Richard Behiel, Prof. Leo Stein and Jakob Schwintenberg for their invaluable expertise and contributions to this video.

Special thanks to Alessandro from ScienceClic for his help on animations and input on the script. Check out his excellent video on Noether’s theorem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF_uHfSoOGA

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0:00 What is symmetry?

4:25 Emmy Noether and Einstein

7:33 General Covariance

11:59 The Principle of Least Action

15:29 Noether’s First Theorem

18:24 The Continuity Equation

23:20 Escape from Germany

24:49 The Standard Model - Higgs and Quarks

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References:

MathHistory Biography - Emmy Amalie Noether via mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk - https://ve42.co/BioNoether

Bartlett, J. G. (2021). The Standard Cosmological Model and CMB Anisotropies. New Astron.Rev. 43 (1999) 83-109 - https://ve42.co/CosmoCMB

Kimberling, C. (1982). Emmy Noether, Greatest Woman Mathematician. Mathematics Teacher, March 1982, Volume 84, Number 3, pp. 246–249. - https://ve42.co/NoetherGreat

Blunck, A., et al. (2016). Mathematik und Gender. Verlag Franzbecker - https://ve42.co/MathGender

Evans, R. J. (1976). The Feminist movement in Germany, 1894-1933. Sage Publications - https://ve42.co/FeministGer

Without Emmy Noether, there would be a huge gap in mathematics and its understanding via www.mpg.de - https://ve42.co/NoetherGap

Dihedral group of order 6 via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/Dihedral6

Emmy Noether University of Erlangen via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/Erlangen

Timeline of women in mathematics via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/WomenMath

Elizaveta Litvinova via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/LitvinovaE

Sofya Kovalevskaya via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/KovalevskayaS

Charlotte Scott via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/ScottC

Cornelia Fabri via Wikipedia - https://ve42.co/FabriC

Emmy Noether, the renowned mathematician who taught 20 years of unpaid classes just because she was a woman via english.elpais.com - https://ve42.co/NoetherPay

Noether, E. (1908). Über die Bildung des Formensystems der ternären biquadratischen Form. Reimer - https://ve42.co/NDissert

Noether, E. (1983). Invariante Variationsprobleme. Gott.Nachr.1918:235-257,1918; Transp.Theory Statist.Phys.1:186-207,1971 - https://ve42.co/InvarProb

Noether, E. (2018). M. A. Tavel’s English translation of “Invariante Variationsprobleme”. arXiv - https://ve42.co/InvarProbEn

Byers, N. (1998). E. Noether’s Discovery of the Deep Connection Between Symmetries and Conservation Laws*. Mod.Phys.Lett. A14 (1999) 99-104 - https://ve42.co/SymCon

De Haro, S. (2021). Noether’s Theorems and Energy in General Relativity. Cambridge University Press, 2021 - https://ve42.co/EnergyGR

Rowe, D. E. (2019). Emmy Noether on Energy Conservation in General Relativity. arXiv - https://ve42.co/EnergyCon

Branding, K. (2005). A Note on General Relativity, Energy Conservation, and Noether’s Theorems. Springer - https://ve42.co/GRanEC

Additional References:

https://ve42.co/NoethersAdRefs

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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:

Adam Foreman, Albert Wenger, Alex Porter, Alexander Tamas, Anton Ragin, Autodidactic Studios, Balkrishna Heroor, Bertrand Serlet, Blake Byers, Bruce, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, David Tseng, Evgeny Skvortsov, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, gpoly, Greg Scopel, iRick, Jon Jamison, Juan Benet, Keith England, KeyWestr, Kyi, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Matthias Wrobel, Meekay, meg noah, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, TTST, Tj Steyn, Ubiquity Ventures, wolfee

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Directed by Matthew Davies

Written by Matthew Davies, Casper Mebius, Derek Muller and Pablo Rovetto

Edited by Trenton Oliver, Peter Nelson and Nick Lear

Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Emma Wright, Andrew Neet, Alessandro Roussel and Ivy Tello

Illustrations by Jakub Misiek, Cainejan Esperanza, Tommy Stevens, Maria Gusakovich and Emma Wright

Additional research by Henry van Dyck, Gabe Strong and Darius Garewal

Produced by Matthew Davies, Casper Mebius, Derek Muller, Zoe Heron, Rob Beasley Spence and Tori Brittain

Thumbnail contributions by Jakub Misiek, Ren Hurley, Ben Powell and Peter Sheppard

Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Pond5

Music from Epidemic Sound