"Dedekind's concern with algebra goes back to the 1850s, when he attended Dirichlet's lectures on number theory... and pursued intensive studies of . ...[H]e developed an abstract treatment of elementary group theory at that time. After Dirichlet's death, Dedekind was charged with publishing Dirichlet's lectures on number theory. In appendices he presented... his ideal theory... The most axiomatic approach [1894]... was the one that especially influenced Emmy Noether and her school of algebraists in the 1920s."