section_path: Legacy
section_name: Legacy
paragraph_text: Legacy
  
  Noether's work continues to be relevant for the development of theoretical physics and mathematics, and she is consistently ranked as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. In his obituary, fellow algebraist B.L. van der Waerden says that her mathematical originality was "absolute beyond comparison", and Hermann Weyl said that Noether "changed the face of algebra by her work". Mathematician and historian Jeremy Gray wrote that any textbook on abstract algebra bears the evidence of Noether's contributions: "Mathematicians simply do ring theory her way." During her lifetime and even until today, Noether has been characterized as the greatest woman mathematician in recorded history by mathematicians such as Pavel Alexandrov, Hermann Weyl, and Jean Dieudonné.
  
  In a letter to The New York Times, Albert Einstein wrote:
  
  In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger generation of mathematicians.