{"id":1295,"date":"2016-09-09T09:24:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T09:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/cannesagenda\/?p=1295"},"modified":"2022-07-16T06:54:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T06:54:00","slug":"meet-the-first-woman-to-win-maths-most-prestigious-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/meet-the-first-woman-to-win-maths-most-prestigious-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the First Woman to Win Math\u2019s Most Prestigious Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"lede\" tabindex=\"-1\">AS AN 8-YEAR-OLD, <\/span>Maryam Mirzakhani used to tell herself stories about the exploits of a remarkable girl. Every night at bedtime, her heroine would become mayor, travel the world or fulfill some other grand destiny.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Mirzakhani \u2014 a 37-year-old mathematics professor at Stanford University \u2014 still writes elaborate stories in her mind.<!--more--> The high ambitions haven\u2019t changed, but the protagonists have: They are hyperbolic surfaces, moduli spaces and dynamical systems. In a way, she said, mathematics research feels like writing a novel. \u201cThere are different characters, and you are getting to know them better,\u201d she said. \u201cThings evolve, and then you look back at a character, and it\u2019s completely different from your first impression.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Iranian mathematician follows her characters wherever they take her, along story lines that often take years to unfold. Petite but indomitable, Mirzakhani has a reputation among mathematicians for tackling the most difficult questions in her field with dogged persistence. \u201cShe has a fearless ambition when it comes to mathematics,\u201d said\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.harvard.edu\/~ctm\/\">Curtis McMullen<\/a>\u00a0of Harvard University, who was Mirzakhani\u2019s doctoral adviser.<\/p>\n<p>With her low voice and steady, gray-blue eyes, Mirzakhani projects an unwavering self-confidence. She has an equal tendency, however, toward humility. Asked to describe her contribution to a particular research problem, she laughed, hesitated and finally said: \u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve had a very huge contribution.\u201d And when an email arrived in February saying that she would receive what is widely regarded as the highest honor in mathematics \u2014 the Fields Medal, which was\u00a0awarded August 13\u00a0at the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.icm2014.org\/\">International Congress of Mathematicians<\/a>\u00a0in Seoul, South Korea \u2014 she assumed that the account from which the email was sent had been hacked.<\/p>\n<p>Other mathematicians, however, describe Mirzakhani\u2019s work in glowing terms. Her doctoral dissertation \u2014 about counting loops on surfaces that have \u201chyperbolic\u201d geometry \u2014 was \u201ctruly spectacular,\u201d said\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.uchicago.edu\/~eskin\/\">Alex Eskin<\/a>, a mathematician at the University of Chicago who has collaborated with Mirzakhani. \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of mathematics you immediately recognize belongs in a textbook.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And one of Mirzakhani\u2019s more recent contributions \u2014 a monumental\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/1302.3320.pdf\">collaboration<\/a>\u00a0with Eskin about the dynamics of abstract surfaces connected to billiard tables \u2014 is \u201cprobably the theorem of the decade\u201d in Mirzakhani\u2019s highly competitive field, said\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.uchicago.edu\/~farb\/\">Benson Farb<\/a>, also a University of Chicago mathematician.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AS AN 8-YEAR-OLD, Maryam Mirzakhani used to tell herself stories about the exploits of a remarkable girl. Every night at bedtime, her heroine would become mayor, travel the world or fulfill some other grand destiny. Today, Mirzakhani \u2014 a 37-year-old mathematics professor at Stanford University \u2014 still writes elaborate stories in her mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwomanfoundation.com\/davosagenda2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}