section_path: Education
section_name: Education
paragraph_text: Education
  
  Noether showed early proficiency in French and English. In the spring of 1900, she took the examination for teachers of these languages and received an overall score of sehr gut (very good). Her performance qualified her to teach languages at schools reserved for girls, but she chose instead to continue her studies at the University of Erlangen, at which her father was a professor.
  
  This was an unconventional decision; two years earlier, the Academic Senate of the university had declared that allowing mixed-sex education would "overthrow all academic order". One of just two women in a university of 986 students, Noether was allowed only to audit classes rather than participate fully, and she required the permission of individual professors whose lectures she wished to attend. Despite these obstacles, on 14 July 1903, she passed the graduation exam at a Realgymnasium in Nuremberg.
  
  During the 1903–1904 winter semester, she studied at the University of Göttingen, attending lectures given by astronomer Karl Schwarzschild and mathematicians Hermann Minkowski, Otto Blumenthal, Felix Klein, and David Hilbert.
  
  In 1903, restrictions on women's full enrollment in Bavarian universities were rescinded. Noether returned to Erlangen and officially reentered the university in October 1904, declaring her intention to focus solely on mathematics. She was one of six women in her year (two auditors) and the only woman in her chosen school. Under the supervision of Paul Gordan, she wrote her dissertation, Über die Bildung des Formensystems der ternären biquadratischen Form (On Complete Systems of Invariants for Ternary Biquadratic Forms), in 1907, graduating summa cum laude later that year. Gordan was a member of the "computational" school of invariant researchers, and Noether's thesis ended with a list of over 300 explicitly worked-out invariants. This approach to invariants was later superseded by the more abstract and general approach pioneered by Hilbert. Although it had been well received, Noether later described her thesis and some subsequent similar papers she produced as "crap".