---
title: "List of inventions and discoveries by women"
chunk: 6/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_and_discoveries_by_women"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:51:34.164784+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

That is, two moments of inertia are equal, the third is half as large, and the center of gravity is located in the plane perpendicular to the symmetry axis (parallel to the plane of the two equal points). QR algorithm
In numerical linear algebra, the QR algorithm is an eigenvalue algorithm: that is, a procedure to calculate the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a matrix. The QR algorithm was developed in the late 1950s by John G. F. Francis and by Vera N. Kublanovskaya, working independently. The basic idea is to perform a QR decomposition, writing the matrix as a product of an orthogonal matrix and an upper triangular matrix, multiply the factors in the reverse order, and iterate. Navier–Stokes equations
Olga Ladyzhenskaya provided the first rigorous proofs of the convergence of a finite difference method for the Navier–Stokes equations. Ladyzhenskaya was on the shortlist for potential recipients for the 1958 Fields Medal, ultimately awarded to Klaus Roth and René Thom. Braid groups are linear
 Ruth Lawrence's  1990 paper, "Homological representations of the Hecke algebra", in Communications in Mathematical Physics, introduced, among other things, certain  novel linear representations of the braid group — known as Lawrence–Krammer representation. In papers published in 2000 and 2001, Daan Krammer and Stephen Bigelow established the faithfulness of Lawrence's representation. This result goes by the phrase "braid groups are linear."
Recursion theory
Rózsa Péter was one of the founders of recursion theory, a branch of mathematical logic, of computer science, and of the theory of computation that originated in the 1930s with the study of computable functions and Turing degrees. The field has since expanded to include the study of generalized computability and definability. In these areas, recursion theory overlaps with proof theory and effective descriptive set theory. Hilbert's tenth problem
Hilbert's tenth problem is the tenth on the list of mathematical problems that the German mathematician David Hilbert posed in 1900. It is the challenge to provide a general algorithm which, for any given Diophantine equation (a polynomial equation with integer coefficients and a finite number of unknowns) can decide whether the equation has a solution with all unknowns taking integer values. For example, the Diophantine equation 
  
    
      
        3
        
          x
          
            2
          
        
        −
        2
        x
        y
        −
        
          y
          
            2
          
        
        z
        −
        7
        =
        0
      
    
    {\displaystyle 3x^{2}-2xy-y^{2}z-7=0}
  
 has an integer solution: 
  
    
      
        x
        =
        1
        ,
         
        y
        =
        2
        ,
         
        z
        =
        −
        2
      
    
    {\displaystyle x=1,\ y=2,\ z=-2}
  
. By contrast, the Diophantine equation 
  
    
      
        
          x
          
            2
          
        
        +
        
          y
          
            2
          
        
        +
        1
        =
        0
      
    
    {\displaystyle x^{2}+y^{2}+1=0}
  
 has no such solution. Hilbert's tenth problem has been solved, and it has a negative answer: such a general algorithm does not exist. This is the result of combined work of Martin Davis, Yuri Matiyasevich, Hilary Putnam and Julia Robinson which spans 21 years, with Yuri Matiyasevich completing the theorem in 1970. The theorem is now known as Matiyasevich's theorem or the MRDP theorem. Optimal design
In the design of experiments, optimal designs (or optimum designs) are a class of experimental designs that are optimal with respect to some statistical criterion. The creation of this field of statistics has been credited to Danish statistician Kirstine Smith. Three-gap theorem
The three-gap theorem states that if one places n points on a circle, at angles of θ, 2θ, 3θ ... from the starting point, then there will be at most three distinct distances between pairs of points in adjacent positions around the circle. When there are three distances, the larger of the three always equals the sum of the other two. Unless θ is a rational multiple of π, there will also be at least two distinct distances. This result was conjectured by Hugo Steinhaus, and proved in the 1950s by Vera T. Sós, János Surányi, and Stanisław Świerczkowski. Its applications include the study of plant growth and musical tuning systems, and the theory of Sturmian words. Noether normalization lemma
The Noether normalization lemma is a result of commutative algebra, introduced by Emmy Noether in 1926. It states that for any field k, and any finitely generated commutative k-algebra A, there exists a nonnegative integer d and algebraically independent elements y1, y2, ..., yd in A such that A is a finitely generated module over  the polynomial ring S:=k[y1, y2, ..., yd]. The theorem has a geometric interpretation. Suppose A is integral. Let S be the coordinate ring of the d-dimensional affine space 
  
    
      
        
          
            A
          
          
            k
          
          
            d
          
        
      
    
    {\displaystyle \mathbb {A} _{k}^{d}}
  
, and A as the coordinate ring of some other d-dimensional affine variety X. Then the inclusion map S → A induces a surjective finite morphism of affine varieties 
  
    
      
        X
        →
        
          
            A
          
          
            k
          
          
            d
          
        
      
    
    {\displaystyle X\to \mathbb {A} _{k}^{d}}
  
. The conclusion is that any affine variety is a branched covering of affine space. The Noether normalization lemma is an important step in proving Hilbert's Nullstellensatz. Noether's theorem
Noether's (first) theorem states that every differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law. The theorem was proven by mathematician Emmy Noether in 1915 and published in 1918, although a special case was proven by E. Cosserat & F. Cosserat in 1909. The action of a physical system is the integral over time of a Lagrangian function (which may or may not be an integral over space of a Lagrangian density function), from which the system's behavior can be determined by the principle of least action. Noether's theorem is used in theoretical physics and the calculus of variations. A generalization of the formulations on constants of motion in Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics (developed in 1788 and 1833, respectively), it does not apply to systems that cannot be modeled with a Lagrangian alone (e.g. systems with a Rayleigh dissipation function). In particular, dissipative systems with continuous symmetries need not have a corresponding conservation law. Noether's theorem can be stated informally
If a system has a continuous symmetry property, then there are corresponding quantities whose values are conserved in time. Noether's second theorem
In mathematics and theoretical physics, Noether's second theorem relates symmetries of an action functional with a system of differential equations. The action S of a physical system is an integral of a so-called Lagrangian function L, from which the system's behavior can be determined by the principle of least action. Isomorphism theorems
In mathematics, specifically abstract algebra, the isomorphism theorems are three theorems that describe the relationship between quotients, homomorphisms, and subobjects. Versions of the theorems exist for groups, rings, vector spaces, modules, Lie algebras, and various other algebraic structures. In universal algebra, the isomorphism theorems can be generalized to the context of algebras and congruences. The isomorphism theorems were formulated in some generality for homomorphisms of modules by Emmy Noether in her paper Abstrakter Aufbau der Idealtheorie in algebraischen Zahl- und Funktionenkörpern which was published in 1927 in Mathematische Annalen. Less general versions of these theorems can be found in work of Richard Dedekind and previous papers by Noether. Three years later, B.L. van der Waerden published his influential Algebra, the first abstract algebra textbook that took the groups-rings-fields approach to the subject.