Emmy Noether's first great mathematics and the culmination of first-phase logicism, formalism, and intuitionism (Q633855)

This article provides a rich historical reconstruction of the influences and future potential of \textit{E. Noether}'s 1916 paper on how to isolate the invariants of a finite group [Math. Ann. 77, 89--92 (1915; JFM 45.0198.01)]. (McLarty says that a translation of Noether's paper is included as an appendix, but this translation did not appear in the published version of this article.) After summarizing the main result of the paper, McLarty provides three different ``histories'' of how one could judge the paper's significance. The first history emphasizes the influence of Noether's thesis advisor Gordan. Gordan is presented as a ``first-phase'' formalist, i.e. a mathematician who, in Klein's summary, focuses on the ``skillful formal treatment of a given question'' (p. 100). The second history links Noether's paper to Weber and his more algebraic style of doing mathematics. The third history considers Noether's paper in the light of later developments, especially the notion of a representation module that can be used to clarify and extend the paper's main results. McLarty does not defend one history at the expense of another. Instead, his conclusion is that Noether ``absorbed all this and went beyond'' (p. 114) in future years through even more innovative mathematical developments.