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PhD thesis: Symmetries, Conservation Laws, and Noether's Variational Problem

The general topic of my DPhil thesis is symmetries and conservation laws in physics. Early in the twentieth century, symmetries and conservation laws were linked mathematically by Emmy Noether via a variational problem. The purpose of my thesis was to investigate this problem and its consequences in the context of the broader philosophical issue of the interpretation of symmetries and conservation laws in physics.

Title pages and Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Galileo's Ship and Descartes' Stone

Chapter 3: Noether's Variational Problem

Chapter 4: Noether's First Theorem

Chapter 5: Noether's Second Theorem

Chapter 6: Theorem 3 (the Klein-Utiyama Theorem)

Chapter 7: The Empirical Significance of Gauge Symmetry

Works Cited