Dr Maryam Mirzakhani - Infinite Women

Born: 12 May 1977, Iran
Died: 14 July 2017
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Persian: مریم میرزاخانی

Dr Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician and Stanford University professor of mathematics. Her research areas included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry. In 2005, as a result of her research, she was acknowledged in Popular Science’s fourth annual “Brilliant 10” as one of the top 10 young minds who have pushed their fields in innovative directions.
On 13 August 2014, Mirzakhani received the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, for her work in “the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”. She was the first, and to date, the only woman and the first Iranian to be honored with the award.
In high school, she won the gold medal for mathematics in the Iranian National Olympiad and in 1994, became the first Iranian female to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong, scoring 41 out of 42 points. The next year, in Toronto, she became the first Iranian to earn a perfect score and to win two gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad. She later collaborated with friend, colleague, and Olympiad silver medalist, Roya Beheshti Zavareh on their 1999 book Elementary Number Theory, Challenging Problems. They were the first women to compete in the Iranian National Mathematical Olympiad and won gold and silver medals respectively in 1995. They were also both survivors of a 1998 bus crash that killed seven other Olympiad competitors.
After earning her Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the Sharif University of Technology, she completed her PhD in 2004 at Harvard University. Mirzakhani was a 2004 research fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University, moving to a professorship at Stanford University in 2009.
As a result of advocacy by the Women’s Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Society, the International Council for Science declared her birthday, 12 May, as International Women in Mathematics Day. In 2016, Maryam Mirzakhani was the first Iranian woman to be officially accepted as a member of the US’s National Academy of Sciences. In February 2020, on the International Day of Women and Girls in STEM, Mirzakhani was honoured by UN Women as one of seven female scientists who have shaped the world. A documentary film, Secrets of the Surface: The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani, was released that same year.