Person: Mirzakhani, Maryam
Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician who worked in America and was the first woman to be awarded a Fields Medal. She worked in the geometry of Riemann surfaces.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Maryam had a great imagination and, when she was eight years old, she would make up stories about a girl who achieved great things, such as becoming mayor or travelling the world.
- About the time the war ended, Maryam completed her studies at elementary school and sat an examination for the Farzanegan middle school for girls in Tehran.
- Roya Beheshti was, like Maryam, born in 1977.
- Maryam thought at this time that she would like to become an author and write such books.
- Both Maryam and her friend Roya Beheshti progressed from Farzanegan middle school to Farzanegan high school.
- They both found a copy of six Mathematical Olympiad problems and Maryam managed to do three of them.
- Both Maryam Mirzakhani and her friend Roya Beheshti made the Iranian Mathematical Olympiad team in 1994.
- The international competition was held that year in Hong Kong and Mirzakhani scored 41 out of 42 and was awarded a gold medal.
- Again in 1995 Mirzakhani was a member of the Iranian Mathematical Olympiad team.
- This time the international competition was held in Toronto, Canada, and Mirzakhani scored 42 out of 42 and was again awarded a gold medal.
- In 1995 Mirzakhani began her study of mathematics at Sharif University of Technology funded with an IPM fellowship.
- Mirzakhani published papers while an undergraduate.
- Mirzakhani was one of these students.
- Seven students and two bus drivers died in the crash but Mirzakhani survived.
- Mirzakhani looked at what happens to the "prime number theorem for geodesics" when one considers only the closed geodesics that are simple, meaning that they do not intersect themselves.
- Harvard University awarded Mirzakhani a Merit fellowship in 2003.
- Mirzakhani's Clay Research Fellowship ran until 2008 when she left Princeton and was appointed as Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University.
- It was in 2006 that Mirzakhani began a collaboration with Alex Eskin of the University of Chicago.
- However, Mirzakhani et al have proved that complex geodesics and their closures in moduli space are in fact surprisingly regular, rather than irregular or fractal.
- Eskin and Mirzakhani published Counting closed geodesics in moduli space in 2011.
- In 2014 Mirzakhani became the first woman to be awarded a Fields Medal.
- Mirzakhani won many honours during her short lifetime in addition to those we have already mentioned.
- Even before she was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014, Mirzakhani had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
- Maryam was a brilliant mathematical theorist, and also a humble person who accepted honours only with the hope that it might encourage others to follow her path.
- Maryam embodied what being a mathematician or scientist is all about: the attempt to solve a problem that hadn't been solved before, or to understand something that hadn't been understood before.
- Maryam had one of the great intellects of our time, and she was a wonderful person.
Born 12 May 1977, Tehran, Iran. Died 14 July 2017, California, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Prize Clay Research Award, Prize Fields Medal, Origin Iran, Women
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
