Noether, Max (1844-1921)

German mathematician who contributed to the development of algebraic geometry and the theory of algebraic functions.

Noether was born in Mannheim and studied at Heidelberg. He spent his career there and at Erlangen, where he became professor 1888. His daughter Emmy Noether became a notable mathematician.

In 1873 he published his one outstanding result, the theorem concerning algebraic curves which contains the ‘Noether conditions’. Given two algebraic curves, Φ(x,y) = 0 and Ψ(x,y) = 0, which intersect at a finite number of isolated points, the equation of an algebraic curve that passes through all the points of intersection may be expressed as:

AΦ + BΨ = 0

where A and B are polynomials in x and y if, and only if, certain conditions (the ‘Noether conditions’) are satisfied.