No label defined (Q4233909)

A charming account of the influence of E. Noether on topology. The author gives a colorful picture of the social and mathematical life in Göttingen at the end of the 1920's. During that period E. Noether attended the lectures of H. Hopf and P. Alexandroff on topology and through discussions, often during the frequent \textit{algebraisch-topologische Spaziergänge}, inspired them to introduce ideas from algebra and group theory in their work. Her influence was particularly strong on the formulation of the homology theory of simplicial complexes. The author contrasts the theories of Alexandroff and Hopf with the work of H. Künneth, written a couple of years earlier. The work of Künneth was very much in the spirit of H. Poincaré, still using incidence matrices, while the work of Alexandroff and Hopf was much more algebraic like in todays standard textbooks, much thanks to the influence of E. Noether. The reader is thankful to the author for presenting quotations in their original language, that is, mostly German. These give a much better feeling for the persons and the spirit of the times, than the much dryer English translations. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0906.00012].