ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief overview of women in mathematics. Dubreil-Jacotin surveys the lives of several of the most historically notable women mathematicians and suggests why they are, relatively, so few. This survey is somewhat depressing in its implication that unknown genius has been wasted or suppressed by societies that have not recognized mathematics as an appropriate activity for women. Dedekind had introduced ideals in algebraic number fields and established the decomposition of an ideal into the product of prime ideals. Lasker had proven that for ideals of polynomials there is in general only one decomposition into the lowest common multiple of primary ideals. In her first paper, Emmy Noether introduced her famous axiom of divisor chains, which permitted her to establish the theorem of the decomposition of an ideal into 1c.m. of primary ideals in every ring satisfying this axiom, and in particular in poly-nominal rings according to Hubert’s finite base theorem.
