Maryam Mirzakhani

The first woman to be awarded the Nobel prize for mathematics

Maryam Mirzakhani is a mathematician, born in Iran in 1977, and who died prematurely of breast cancer on July of 2017 in the United States.

After gaining her doctorate at Harvard University, she was a mathematics professor and researcher at the University of Standford. Her studies cover striking and original research on geometry and dynamic systems. Her work on Riemann surfaces and their spatial models connect and influences various mathematical disciplines such as hyperbolic geometry, complex analysis, topology and dynamics. Mirzakhani studied the complex mathematical relationships that govern twisting and stretching surfaces.

In 2014, Maryam was the first woman and one of the four people to ever receive the Fields Medal. This prize is awarded every four years and it is considered the most prestigious award in Mathematics, as there is no Nobel Prize in this discipline. The award recognized her stunning advances in the theory of Riemann surfaces, and their modular spaces.

Maryam also received the Blumenthal award for advanced research in pure mathematics and the Satter Prize of the American Society of Mathematics.

«I hope that this award [the Fields Medal] will inspire lots more girls and young women in this country and around the world to believe in their own abilities and aim to be the Fields medalists of the future.»