1. On 13 August 2014, Mirzakhani was honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, becoming the first woman to win the prize, as well as the first Iranian.
17 Facts About Maryam Mirzakhani
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Maryam Mirzakhani was considered a leading force in the fields of hyperbolic geometry, topology and dynamics.
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Maryam Mirzakhani's work focused on the intricate and complex dynamics of geometric structures, with particular emphasis on moduli spaces and Riemann surfaces.
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Maryam Mirzakhani earned her undergraduate degree from Sharif University of Technology and went on to pursue her PhD at Harvard University under the mentorship of Fields Medalist Curtis T McMullen.
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Maryam Mirzakhani was born on 12 May 1977 in Tehran, Iran.
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In 1994, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first Iranian woman to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong, scoring 41 out of 42 points.
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Maryam Mirzakhani then went to the United States for graduate work, earning a PhD in 2004 from Harvard University, where she worked under the supervision of the Fields Medalist, Curtis T McMullen.
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Maryam Mirzakhani used to take her class notes in her native language Persian.
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Maryam Mirzakhani was a 2004 research fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University.
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Maryam Mirzakhani made several contributions to the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces.
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In 2014, with Alex Eskin and with input from Amir Mohammadi, Maryam Mirzakhani proved that complex geodesics and their closures in moduli space are surprisingly regular, rather than irregular or fractal.
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Maryam Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 for "her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces".
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In 2008, Maryam Mirzakhani married Jan Vondrak, a Czech theoretical computer scientist and applied mathematician who currently is a professor at Stanford University.
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Additionally, Sharif University of Technology, the institute wherein Maryam Mirzakhani obtained her bachelor's, has since named their main library in the College of Mathematics after her.
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Maryam Mirzakhani met the society in September 2015, when she visited Oxford.
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In 2016, Maryam Mirzakhani was made a member of the National Academy of Sciences, making her the first Iranian woman to be officially accepted as a member of the academy.
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In February 2020, on International Day of Women and Girls in STEM, Maryam Mirzakhani was honored by UN Women as one of seven female scientists dead or alive who have shaped the world.