I have been teaching physics, on and off, for 30 years now, and every time I get to momentum and start writing “kg m/s” for the unit, my students ask if there is some official unit they can use instead. And every time, I have to inform them that, sadly, there is not.

The International System of Units1 contains seven base units and 22 derived units. Of these units, 17 are named in honor of people, every one of whom is a man. It seems to me that momentum offers the perfect opportunity to admit a woman to that club. For several years, I have been declaring that, in my class, one kg m/s is equal to one Noether, in honor of Emmy Noether, whose theorem2 shows, among other things, that space translation symmetry results in conservation of momentum.

Formal adoption of this new unit by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures may take a while. I propose that we teachers start the process from the grassroots. Let us adopt the Noether in our own classrooms and abbreviate it Nr (which is shorter—what my students want—and which will honor Emmy Noether's contributions to physics—what is long overdue).

1.
BIPM
,
The International System of Units
, 9th ed. (
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, Sèvres
,
France
,
2019
).
2.
E.
Noether
, “
Invariante Variationsprobleme
,”
Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Göttingen, Math.-Phys. Kl.
1918
,
235
257
(
1918
).