Women of Interest – Maryam Mirzakhani

Maryam Mirzakhani was born May 3, 1977, in Tehran, Iran, and died of breast cancer on July 14, 2017. Mirzakhani was the only woman, and the first Iranian, to win the Fields Medal, which is equivalent to the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. The Fields Medal has been described as the most prestigious honor in mathematics. It was established in 1936 and is only given to individuals aged 40 or younger. Maryam Mirzakhani received her BSc in 1999 from the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. She then moved to the United States and earned her PhD from Harvard University in 2004. Mirzakhani was the recipient of many honors and awards including being named one of Nature Magazine’s ten “people who mattered” of 2004. She received the Clay Research Award in 2014 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. Additional information about this outstanding woman, who was taken far too early, can be found at the following websites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/us/maryam-mirzakhani-dead.html
http://fortune.com/2017/07/15/maryam-mirzakhani-dead-math-nobel-prize/