See here for the voting procedure, and background.
E. Noether, “Invariante Variationsprobleme,” Nachr. v. d. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen 1918, pp235-257.
It’s often forgotten just how central symmetry is in modern physics. This is the paper that gave us the tools to make symmetry work for us in a modern context. Will the punters recognize their debt to Emmy Noether and push her all the way to gold? We shall see. See this site for links to English translation.
Make one comment, which will be your vote. (Any other comments from you on this thread will be deleted.) Feel free to tell the world what this paper means to you…. and why you voted for it over the others….. Or you can just make a comment that registers your vote, making whatever noise you want!
Voting ends 9:00pm, Jan 16th Pacific Standard Time.
-cvj
January 9th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Noether’s theorem wins.
Nothing like having my mind blown up when I see the origin of conservation laws.
Besides, she’s a girl and my computer hostname is also named noether.
January 9th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Muu!
January 9th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Ah..! The first vote had to be from me.. right?
Clifford,
Great that you included this!
To me, this remains one of the central reasons why physics is so beautiful.
January 9th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Not that I would understand a word of the paper (though physicist, though being born were Emmy Noether was born), but this is for me one of the most elegant and interesting theories. And it remebers me that physics actually is beautiful, as Aswin said.
January 9th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
I used to have some small degree of understanding of this. But I’m going to vote for this one, because this is such a powerful mathematical tool applicable to physics. Plus, being an artist and all, the notion of beauty in symmetry is deeply seductive to me.
January 9th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Noether! Not only because she derived rigorous (mathematical symmetry)-(conserved property) linkages validated by empirical observation,
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm#b21
but also because Noether’s two theorems allow a loophole for non-conservation of angular momentum consistent with 400+ years of physics observations. That is exciting! Somebody should look.
January 10th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Aye.
January 10th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
So pretty.
January 10th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
I just remember the first time I read Noether’s theorem, it gave me the chills… so simple so beautiful. It certainly gets my vote.
January 11th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
[...] I had earlier made a post about Clifford’s post on the “Greatest Physics Paper”. It is always fun to talk about history of physics and this thread certainly served that purpose. I also thought that Clifford had intended to have a debate and then run away… But, surprisingly, he has come back to the post and it is time to Vote!! AND Emmy Noether’s Symmetries Paper (my suggestion) is amongst the final five! As expected, The Principia is currently leading the way… [...]
January 12th, 2006 at 7:20 am
I read as a high school student that time invariance causes energy conservation, translation invariance causes momentum conservation, and so on. I was totally fascinated.
Then I grew up to be a mathematician, and now earn my daily bread using, among other things, Noether’s beautiful commutative algebra results. She’s just great.
January 14th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Bello!
January 16th, 2006 at 11:36 am
If it’s not too late to vote, I’m casting mine for Noether and her theorem. It was a close call between Newton (the vote of the past) and EPR (the vote of the future). But this wins because learning about this theorem in grad school was a big “wow!” moment for me, and because the notion of symmetry was so important for both great 20th century physics theories (GR & QM/FT).
Of course, 100 years in the future we might be having discussions like this on super-fast quantum computers and we’ll all be praising EPR for (indirectly) pointing the way. Who knows?
January 16th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Newton may have started it all, but this paper does a lot to tie our understanding of physics together.
January 16th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
It’s all about being *modern*, and *universal*. It’s also about (unfortunately) being restricted to theory…but given constraint, this is it.
Note I don’t consider Newton a true candidate in this discussion.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:46 am
[...] 14 votes: E. Noether, “Invariante Variationsprobleme,” Nachr. v. d. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen 1918, pp235-257. Link here for the votes. [...]
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Noether’s paper shows, quite simply, that the universe is not legislated. It runs on symmetry. To me, this is the apex of human thinking.