"The first "modern" text in algebra, van der Waerden's Modern Algebra, which appeared in 1931, was heavily influenced by Emmy Noether. It is an enlightening exercise to compare this work with algebra books of just a few decades earlier to see the profound influence that she had on our present conception of algebra. Nevertheless, even Noether realized that one needs to be familiar with a wide variety of concrete examples from all parts of mathematics before one can understand the value of the generalizations she was able to make."