An Iranian-born woman has become the first female to ever win the Fields Medal, an honor known as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.
Maryam Mirzakhani was educated at Harvard and is currently a professor at Stanford University. She is one of four winners of the impressive award, which is given every four years.
Women are still highly underrepresented in the field of mathematics. Only about 9 percent of tenure positions in the field are held by women.
"This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians," Mirzakhani says. "I am sure there will be many more women winning this kind of award in coming years."
The presentation of the Fields Medal, which is officially called the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, happens on Aug. 13 in Seoul, South Korea. Not only is Mirzakhani the first woman to win the medal, but she's also the first recipient from Stanford University to win since 1966.
Mirzakhani won the award based on her contributions to geometry and "dynamical systems," particularly concerning the symmetry of curved surfaces. Although theoretical, her work is important to the field of physics, particularly in understanding how the universe was born. In mathematics, her work is important to research involving prime numbers and cryptography.
"Fluent in a remarkably diverse range of mathematical techniques and disparate mathematical cultures, she embodies a rare combination of superb technical ability, bold ambition, far-reaching vision, and deep curiosity," says the International Congress of Mathematicians, the group responsible for handing out the Fields Medal.
Mirzakhani was born in Tehran, Iran. Her first interest was in writing, but, she gained an interest in mathematics after her brother showed her a complex math problem. She earned her bachelor's degree in Iran and then her doctorate at Harvard. After that, she worked with the Clay Mathematics Institute and was an assistant professor at Princeton University. In 2008, she became a mathematics professor at Stanford, where she currently lives with her husband and three-year-old daughter.
She has won other awards as well: the 2009 Blumenthal Award for the Advancement of Research in Pure Mathematics and the 2013 Satter Prize of the American Mathematical Society. However, the prestigious Fields Medal is now the highlight of her career.
Mirzakhani says that she loves working with math and the research involved with it. She compared it to being "lost in the jungle" and trying to use what she knows to find solutions to problems.
