The Noether theorems in context

Situating Noether's 1918 article, 'Invariante Variationsprobleme', in their context requires a brief outline of the work of her predecessors and a description of her career, first in Erlangen, then in Göttingen at the time of the debate on the conservation of energy that had arisen in the general theory of relativity. Her article will be briefly summarised. Then I shall address these questions: how original was the 'Invariante Variationsprobleme'? how modern were Noether's use of Lie groups and her introduction of generalized vector fields? and how influential was her article? To this end I shall sketch its reception from 1918 to 1970