Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017), the only female mathematician to win a Fields Medal to date, is perhaps one of the brightest minds in the history of mathematics. During the late 19’s, when it was quite difficult for women to enroll themselves in tertiary education, Maryam Mirzakhani paved herself the way to that winning all the obstacles around her surroundings.
Childhood and Early Life
Born on 12 May 1977 to a typical Muslim family in Iran, Maryam had to experience hard times due to the Iran-Iraq war of that time. From her childhood, she always wanted to be a writer as she found reading novels very fascinating. In fact, she was not a “math” person until high school when she was introduced to Gauss’s famous and beautiful process of finding the sum of numbers from 1 to 100 by her elder brother.
Though Maryam’s parents were always very supportive to her, they didn’t care much about her success and achievements as they did about her brothers. Maryam went to a high school in Tehran where she met her life-long best friend Roya Beheshti who helped Maryam in different aspects of her life. Even they both published a book together on challenging problems in elementary number theory in 1999.
Success at IMO
Maryam started her journey as a gold medalist at IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad) which is considered as one of the most prestigious and popular competitions for mathematics throughout the world in 1994 scoring 41 out of 42. In the very next year, she again won a gold medal but this time with a perfect score and became the first Iranian to do so.
Education
Maryam obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Later she pursued her PhD from Harvard University under the supervision of Curtis Tracy McMullen, another Fields Medalist of 1998.
Research and Career
Maryam’s research focuses mainly revolved around the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. Besides she made a significant contribution in Hyperbolic Geometry, Ergodic Theory, and Symplectic Geometry to name a few.
Maryam started her career as a professor of Mathematics at Princeton University in 2004. But later in 2009, she was appointed as a full-time professor at Stanford University.
Awards and Honors
Maryam was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 which is considered a Noble Prize for mathematicians. In fact, she is the only female to win this prestigious prize till now.
In personal life, Maryam was an ordinary woman who liked to spend time with family. She liked to think about harder problems solely and travel freely. She used to solve problems by drawing the doughnut-shaped surfaces on a piece of paper which her only daughter described as her mother’s paintings.
In an interview, Maryam described herself as a “slow mathematician” as she used to spend a lot of time coming up with ideas and making further progress. Yet the excitement to discover and understand something new always kept her on track. According to her,
“Without being excited, mathematics can look pointless and cold. The beauty of
mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers.”
Unfortunately this young female mathematician died of breast cancer at the age of 40 on 14 July 2017. In respect to her memory, the International Council for Science declared 12 May, Maryam’s birthday, as International Women in Mathematics Day.
Maryam Mirzakhani is undoubtedly a role model of all time for all the girls out there who want to achieve success in the STEM field.
By Shobha Islam || Intern, YSSE
