Maryam Mirzakhani’s mathematical legacy lives on | Science Heroes - Massive Science

Kirsi Goldynia, former scientist and journalist writes, The first woman to win a Fields Medal was only 40 when she died, but she revolutionized mathematics.

Photo: Matteo Farinella

There was a time, during her early years in Tehran, when Maryam Mirzakhani preferred literature to arithmetic. But by her adolescence, any uncertainty about her academic calling had been cast aside; she was clearly a mathematician.

As a teenager she won two gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiads for high school students, the second of which was accompanied by a perfect score. Mirzakhani went on to earn a degree in mathematics from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran before moving to the U.S. to pursue her PhD at Harvard under the guidance of Curtis McMullen, a Fields Medal recipient. She would soon follow in his footsteps.

Mirzakhani, who died of breast cancer at age 40, was the only woman – and the only Iranian – ever to win a Fields Medal. It’s the most prestigious award in mathematics, akin to a Nobel Prize, and she was honored in 2014 for her work on the geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.
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Source: Massive Science