Gordan and Noether proved in their fundamental theorem that an hypersurface $$X=V(F)\subseteq {{\mathbb {P}}}^n$$
X
=
V
(
F
)
⊆
P
n
with $$n\le 3$$
n
≤
3
is a cone if and only if F has vanishing hessian (i.e. the determinant of the Hessian matrix). They also showed that the statement is false if $$n\ge 4$$
n
≥
4
, by giving some counterexamples. Since their proof, several others have been proposed in the literature. In this paper we give a new one by using a different perspective which involves the study of standard Artinian Gorenstein $${{\mathbb {K}}}$$
K
-algebras and the Lefschetz properties. As a further application of our setting, we prove that a standard Artinian Gorenstein algebra $$R={{\mathbb {K}}}[x_0,\dots ,x_4]/J$$
R
=
K
[
x
0
,
⋯
,
x
4
]
/
J
with J generated by a regular sequence of quadrics has the strong Lefschetz property. In particular, this holds for Jacobian rings associated to smooth cubic threefolds.