An Iranian mathematician has broken the gender barrier to become the first woman in the world to win the Fields Medal, which is considered the equivalent of the maths Nobel prize, since the award was established 80 years ago.
37-year-old Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University, California, was recognized for her work in complex geometry and honored with the prestigious Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, August 13.
The medal is awarded to a maximum of four recipients every four years. The recipients are required to be under 40 years at the beginning of that year. There have been over 50 Fields Medal winners since 1936 and all have been male. The medalist also gets the prize money worth 15,000 Canadian dollars.
"This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians," said Mirzakhani. "I am sure there will be many more women winning this kind of award in coming years."
Apart from Mirzakhani, the other winners are Manjul Bhargava from Princeton University, Artur Avila of Denis Diderot University in Paris, France, and Martin Hairer from the University of Warwick, UK.
Mirzakhani studies the geometry of moduli space and the award recognizes her contributions in the field of dynamical systems and geometry. Mirzakhani was born in Tehran, Iran, and as a little girl, the mathematician dreamt of becoming a writer. However, her gift for solving complex mathematical problems began to show when she was still in high school.
She is a popular figure in Iran and came into the limelight in 1995 when she won achieved a perfect score in the International Mathematics Olympiad and became the first Iranian student to achieve this.
"She is very, very well known in Iran, where she is held out as an example for younger students," says Ingrid Daubechies, the president of the International Mathematical Union, which selects the Fields medalists. "Speaking as a woman myself, it is a wonderful thing to see her win. It will lay to rest the often-quoted fact that a woman has never won."
Mirzakhani's achievement will be an inspiration for many more women.
