Maryam Mirzakhani, an elite mathematician, professor at Stanford University, was the first woman and the first Iranian to win the Fields Medal. Her birthday has been named International Women in Mathematics Day.
Professor Maryam Mirzakhani is a mathematical genius of Iran and a young and distinguished international figure in world mathematics.
A simple and humble yet talented, creative, hardworking and motivated lady who overcame all obstacles and her name as a history maker became immortal forever. Maryam is the first woman in the world and the first Iranian to win the Nobel Prize in Mathematics, which is known as the “Fields Medal”. The discoveries and scientific services of this elite mathematician and outstanding scientist of mathematics in his short life of 40 years have registered a day with his title in the world calendar.
May 12th, the birthday of Professor Maryam Mirzakhani, is named International Women’s Day in Mathematics. In this article, with Dr.Graphic you will learn more about the life of Maryam Mirzakhani, a well-known Iranian mathematician.
Who is Maryam Mirzakhani?
Maryam Mirzakhani was born on May 12, 1977 in Tehran. Her father, Ahmed Mirzakhani, was an electrical engineer and the chairman of the board of directors of the Raad charitable educational complex. Maryam Mirzakhani’s father is from Taleghan, Alborz province.
Early life and education
With the completion of Maryam Mirzakhani’s primary education, the war in Iran ended and the atmosphere in the country calmed down. At the end of elementary school, he participated in the entrance exam of Sampad schools (National Organization for the Development of Talented Talents) and entered Farzangan High School in Tehran. During this time, he met Roya Beheshti and their friendship continued for several years. Mirzakhani completed his undergraduate course at Sharif University of Technology.
Winning a medal in the Olympiad
Maryam Mirzakhani along with Roya Beheshti were the first girls who made it to the Iranian Math Olympiad team. In 1994 and 1995 (third and fourth year of high school), Maryam Mirzakhani from Farzangan High School in Tehran won the gold medal of the National Mathematical Olympiad and she was the first girl to win gold in the Iranian Mathematical Olympiad.
He won the world gold medal at the Hong Kong World Mathematical Olympiad in 1994 with a score of 41 out of 42, and the following year, he won the world gold medal at the Canadian World Mathematical Olympiad with a perfect score.
Maryam Mirzakhani, the survivor of the accident of Iran’s mathematical elite
The bus carrying math students participating in the 22nd student math competition, which was on its way from Ahvaz to Tehran in March 1997, fell into the valley after an accident. Maryam Mirzakhani was one of the survivors of this accident. Unfortunately, six mathematics students of Sharif University, most of whom were winners of national and international mathematics olympiads, died in this incident.
Teaching at the university
During his studies at Sharif University, Mirzakhani found a simple proof for Shura’s theorem, which was published in the American Mathematical Association. Then Maryam went to Harvard University and in 2004, she got her doctorate from Harvard University.
While studying at Harvard University, when he attended the classes of Curtis McMullen (one of the Fields Award winners), he asked many questions and took notes in Farsi.
Maryam Mirzakhani started teaching as an assistant professor at Princeton University after receiving her doctorate degree. He stayed at Princeton until 2008 and reached the rank of full professor. Then, on September 1, 2008, at the age of 31, he started working as a full professor at Stanford University.
Career
Mirzakhani was a 2004 research fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University. In 2009, she became a professor at Stanford University.
Mirzakhani made several contributions to the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. Mirzakhani’s early work solved the problem of counting simple closed geodesics on hyperbolic Riemann surfaces by finding a relationship to volume calculations on moduli space. Geodesics are the natural generalization of the idea of a “straight line” to “curved spaces“. Slightly more formally, a curve is a geodesic if no slight deformation can make it shorter. Closed geodesics are geodesics which are also closed curves—that is, they are curves that close up into loops. A closed geodesic is simple if it does not cross itself.
Solving a complex puzzle in mathematics by Maryam Mirzakhani
Mathematicians have been looking for a practical way to calculate the volume of alternative codes of hyperbolic geometric forms for a long time, and in the meantime, young Maryam Mirzakhani at Princeton University showed that using mathematics may be the best way to reach a clear solution. had at his disposal Maryam Mirzakhani’s research in mathematics is related to various branches such as hyperbolic geometry, algebraic geometry, topology, dynamic systems and probability theory, and she connected them together and laid the groundwork for new methods in these branches, such as the perspective and they give a novel proof of some mathematical problems, such as Witten’s conjecture about the background space of Riemannian surfaces or Tersten’s flux in dynamical systems. Maryam Mirzakhani and her colleagues solved the unsolved problem of mathematicians by conjectural proof in the domain of mixed context spaces.
Fields Medal for Maryam Mirzakhani
In 2005, the American magazine Popular Science chose Maryam Mirzakhani as one of the 10 young minds of the world. In 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani received the “Fields” medal of the International Mathematical Union (IMU). Every four years, during the Congress of the World Mathematical Union, a valuable medal and the most important prize for mathematicians in the world, the Fields Medal, is awarded to young mathematicians (less than 40 years old) who have done valuable work in mathematics.
Personal life
In 2004, Maryam Mirzakhani married Jan Vandrak from the Czech Republic. Her husband is an associate professor of mathematics at Stanford University and a former researcher in theoretical computer science at the IBM Research Center.
After marriage, Maryam Mirzakhani and Yan Vandrak had a daughter named Anahita. One of Mrs. Mirzakhani’s wishes was to grant Iranian citizenship to her daughter. This dream was not realized during his lifetime, but after that, the Islamic Council took action to speed up the amendment of Iran’s citizenship law, with the aim of implementing his will, and “the general provisions of the law amending the law on determining the citizenship status of children from the marriage of Iranian women with foreign men” It was approved by the representatives.
International Women’s Day in Mathematics
The International Union of Mathematical Societies of the World named Maryam Mirzakhani’s birthday (May 12th) as the International Women’s Day in Mathematics with the suggestion of the Women’s Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Association.
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The death of Maryam Mirzakhani
Maryam Mirzakhani died on July 23, 2016 at the age of 40 in a hospital in California. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 and this cancer spread to her bone marrow and unfortunately this elite lady died.
Awards and Honors
- Gold medal. International Mathematical Olympiad (Hong Kong 1994)
- Gold medal. International Mathematical Olympiad (Canada 1995)
- IPM Fellowship, Tehran, Iran, 1995–1999
- Merit fellowship Harvard University, 2003
- Harvard Junior Fellowship Harvard University, 2003
- Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow 2004
- Popular Science’s 2005 “Brilliant 10”, one of the top 10 young minds who have pushed their fields in innovative directions.
- AMS Blumenthal Award 2009
- Invited to talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010, on the topic of “Topology and Dynamical Systems & ODE”
- The 2013 AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics.
- Simons Investigator Award 2013
- Named one of Nature magazine’s ten “people who mattered” of 2014
- Clay Research Award 2014
- Fields Medal 2014
- Elected foreign associate to the French Academy of Sciences in 2015
- Elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2015
- National Academy of Sciences 2016
- Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.
- Asteroid 321357 Mirzakhani was named in her memory. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center (MPC 108698).
- In 2024 the International Astronomical Union named the lunar crater Mirzakhani in her honor.
- Mirzakhani has an Erdős number of 3.
After years of studying and teaching in this field and winning proud honors, Iran’s math queen “Maryam Mirzakhani” is still known as one of the geniuses of Iranian and world history.
This article is dedicated to the spirit of Maryam Mirzakhani on behalf of the Dr.Graphic team.
Resorces: Wikipedia _ Harvard University
2 Comments
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