Despite this prejudice, Emmy was eventually allowed to take an exam which would qualify her to become a graduate student in mathematics. However, even after passing her doctorate, the university would not give her a job teaching students because they had a policy against female professors. Undeterred, Emmy Noether continued with her mathematical research, covering her father's classes at the Mathematics Institue when he was ill.

Having published several important papers on her work, Emmy Noether's expertise came to the attention of David Hilbert, an influential mathematician at the University of Gottingen. Hilbert tried to get Noether a position to work with them, but the faculty objected to a woman mathematician joining the university. Hilbert ignored them and recruited her anyway, although she was still not paid for the teaching she did there. It was here that she made her biggest contribution to physics by proving Noether's theorem, which has been described as "on a par with Pythagoras's theorem" in terms of its usefulness to physics.



