Source: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/07/17/obituary-maryam-mirzakhani-math-professor-and-fields-medal-trailblazer-dies-at-40/
Maryam Mirzakhani, Stanford mathematics professor and the only
woman to earn the Fields Medal, died Saturday at age 40 after a four-year
battle with breast cancer.
Iranian-born Mirzakhani won her Fields Medal, mathematics’ most
prestigious honor, in 2014. The award is often equated to the Nobel Prize.
Mirzakhani’s colleagues have honored both her academic achievements and her
character.
(Courtesy of
Stanford News)
“Maryam is gone far too soon, but her impact will live on for the
thousands of women she inspired to pursue math and science,” said Stanford
President Marc Tessier-Lavigne to Stanford News. “Maryam was a brilliant mathematical theorist, and also a humble
person who accepted honors only with the hope that it might encourage others to
follow her path. Her contributions as both a scholar and a role model are
significant and enduring, and she will be dearly missed here at Stanford and
around the world.”
A Stanford math professor since 2008, Mirzakhani specialized in
theoretical mathematics, including topics such as moduli spaces, Teichmüller
theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry, according
to Stanford News. She was fascinated with describing the geometric and dynamic
complexities of curved surfaces such as spheres, doughnut shapes, and amoebas.
“What’s so special about Maryam, the thing that really separates
her, is the originality in how she puts together these disparate pieces,” said
mathematics professor Steven Kerckhoff at the time of Mirzakhani’s Fields Medal
award. “That was the case starting with her thesis work, which generated
several papers in all the top journals. The novelty of her approach made it a
real tour de force.”
Mirzakhani’s work has implications for the study of other topics in
mathematics, including prime numbers and cryptography, as well as the physics
of the origin of the universe, quantum field theory and secondary applications
to engineering and material science.
According to Stanford News, Mirzakhani was recently in
collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Alex Eskin to find the
trajectory of a billiard ball around a polygonal table—a challenge that has
stumped physicists for over a century. The 200-page paper, published in 2013,
was hailed as “the beginning of a new era” in mathematics and “a titanic work.”
“Maryam embodied what being a mathematician or scientist is all
about: the attempt to solve a problem that hadn’t been solved before, or to
understand something that hadn’t been understood before.,” said Ralph L. Cohen,
the Barbara Kimball Browning Professor of Mathematics at Stanford, to Stanford
News “This is driven by a deep intellectual curiosity, and there is great joy
and satisfaction with every bit of success. Maryam had one of the great
intellects of our time, and she was a wonderful person. She will be
tremendously missed.”
Mirzakhani was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, where she attended
an all-girls’ high school. Mirzakhani became the first girl to compete on
Iran’s International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) team. At the 1994 IMO, she
earned a gold medal, and in 1995, she earned a perfect score.
She attended college at Sharif University in Tehran, then graduate
school at Harvard University, where she was guided by Curtis McMullen, a fellow
Fields Medal winner, who described Mirzakhani as filled with “fearless
ambition.” After completing her doctorate and before coming to Stanford,
Mirzakhani was an assistant professor at Princeton University and a research
fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute.
Mirzakhani is survived by her daughter, Anahita, and her husband,
Jan Vondrák.
The University is set to organize a memorial in the fall, when
students and faculty are back on campus.
