Maryam Mirzakhani, First Woman to Win the Fields Medal

“The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers”.
–Maryam Mirzakhani

She was born in Tehran, Iran on May 12th, 1977, she had a difficult childhood since in the years of 1980 and 1988 she had to live the war between Iraq and Iran. Maryam always had a great imagination, at 8 years old, she imagined stories about a girl who achieved great things. At this age, she wanted to become a writer when she was an adult. However, upon reaching high school, her affinity for mathematics and working on mathematical proofs changed her perspective.

“It is fun – it’s like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case,” she said. “I felt that this was something I could do, and I wanted to pursue this path.” And so she did, Mirzakhani became famous in the mathematical field as a teenager, winning in 1994 and 1995 the gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. In 1999 she obtained her degree in mathematics from Sharif University of Technology and immediately began work on her doctorate at Harvard University.

From 2004 to 2008 she was a researcher at the Clay Institute of Mathematics and an assistant professor at Princeton University. In 2008 she became a professor at Stanford, where she lived with her daughter and her husband. It was in 2014 when she won the prestigious Fields Medal, the highest award that can be received in mathematics, becoming the first woman to achieve this achievement.

In 2013, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she fought for 4 years but finally died of it in 2017 at Stanford Hospital, California.

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References:

Carey, Bjorn (August 12th, 2014) Stanford’s Maryam Mirzakhani wins Fields Medal, Stanford University. Retrieved on August 19th 2020 from: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/august/fields-medal-mirzakhani-081214.html

Myers Andrew y Carey Bjorn (July 15th, 2017) Maryam Mirzakhani, Stanford mathematician and Fields Medal winner, dies. Stanford University. Retrieved on August 19th 2020 from: https://news.stanford.edu/2017/07/15/maryam-mirzakhani-stanford-mathematician-and-fields-medal-winner-dies/

White, Martin (2020) Maryam Mirzakhani. Britannica. Retrieved on August 19th 2020 from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maryam-Mirzakhani