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Maryam Mirzakhani, First Woman to Win the “Nobel Prize” in Mathematics
11-04-2015
The International Mathematical Union was established to honor excellent mathematicians under the age of 40 years. The award presented was named after the Canadian mathematician John C. Fields. It is known as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics.”
Since 1936 the field medal was awarded every 4 years, and 1 to 4 outstanding mathematicians are honored with it.
In 2014 it was the first time a woman was honored by the prize. A professor at Stanford University, she was rewarded for her outstanding contributions towards the “dynamics and geometry or Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.”
Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian national, has excelled in maths since she was in high school. Over the years she won numerous gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad; at the most distinguished math tournament in the world, for per-collegiate students TWICE.
In an interview with Stanford Report she said; “It is fun, like connecting the dots to a case or like solving a puzzle” added “It was something I could accomplish, and wanted to pursue it.”
She got her undergraduate degree from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran. And her PhD at Harvard University; she studied under Curtis McMullen (Who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998.)
Maryam is honored for her findings the volume of moduli spaces in the complex one dimensional planes also known as Riemann Surfaces. She is also talented in other areas of Math; and has research interests in “Teichmuller theory, Sympathetic geometry, Hyperbolic geometry, and Ergodic theory.”
Her workings have the potential to influence areas such as material science, quantum field theory, engineering, and theoretical physics.
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