I didn’t mean for a big gap from episode 4 (“Dangerous Beauty”), but COVID-19 and the reality of digital teaching intervened. A lot has happened since that episode. Here, in the conclusion of this two-part series on symmetry, I reflect on the realities we face in going back to school, in-person, in the middle of an exploding pandemic. I look at what happens when inadequate medical support meets human mortality, and the loss of genius that happens in the resulting mess. Let’s explore these themes through a particularly brilliant lens: Amalie Emmy Noether.
Show Notes
- “Reality in the Shadows (or) What the Heck’s the Higgs?“. S. James Gates, Jr., Frank Blitzer, Stephen Jacob Sekula. YBK Publishers Inc. 2017.
- “Etudes pour le Tierces” and “Etudes pour les sonorites opposees” by Claude Debussy (released in 1916), recorded in 1954, and performed by Walter Gieseking. Available in the public domain from Wikimedia Commons.
- “The Noether Theorems: Invariance and Conservation Laws in the Twentieth Century”, by Yvette Kosmann-Schwarzbach and translated by Bertram E. Schwarzbach. Springer. 2011.
