Iran-born Maryam Mirzakhani remembered as 'Math genius'

[tao]

President Hassan Rouhani praises Mirzakhani's "unprecedented brilliance", saying her death caused great sorrow.

 

Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian-born mathematician who was the first woman to win the coveted Fields Medal, has died in a US hospital after a battle with cancer. She was 40.

 

Mirzakhani' friend Firouz Naderi announced her death on Saturday on Instagram, and her relatives confirmed the death to the Mehr agency in Iran.

 

"A light was turned off today. It breaks my heart ..... gone far too soon," wrote Naderi, a former director of Solar Systems Exploration at NASA.

 

"A genius? Yes. But also a daughter, a mother and a wife," he added in a subsequent post.

 

Mirzakhani, a professor at Stanford University in California, died after the cancer she had been battling for four years spread to her bone marrow, Iranian media said.

 

In 2014 Mirzakhani won the Fields Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, which is awarded by the International Congress of Mathematicians.

 

The award recognised her sophisticated and highly original contributions to the fields of geometry and dynamical systems, particularly in understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces such as spheres.

 

Born in 1977 and raised in Tehran, she attended an all-girls high school and then studied at the capital's Sharif University. 

 

Mirzakhani initially dreamed of becoming a writer, but by the time she started high school her affinity for solving mathematical problems and working on proofs had shifted her sights.

 

"It is fun -- it's like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case," she said when she won the Fields Medal.

 

"I felt that this was something I could do, and I wanted to pursue this path."

 

Mirzakhani said she enjoyed pure mathematics because of the elegance and longevity of the questions she studies.

 

"It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out," she added.

 

In 2008 she became a professor of mathematics at Stanford. She is survived by her husband, who is also a Standford University maths researcher, and their young daughter.

'Great sorrow'

In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani said that Mirzakhani's "doleful passing" has caused "great sorrow," state media reported.

 

Rouhani praised the "unprecedented brilliance of this creative scientist and modest human being, who made Iran's name resonate in the world's scientific forums, (and) was a turning point in showing the great will of Iranian women and young people on the path towards reaching the peaks of glory...in various international arenas."

 

Rouhani also re-posted on Twitter a 2014 tribute with photos of Mirzakhani wearing a veil and without a veil. 

تبریک به خانم مریم میرزاخانی. امروز ایرانیان میتوانند به خود ببالند که اولین زن برنده جایزه "فیلدز" هموطن آنان است. pic.twitter.com/xYhcWYcMu7

— حسن روحانی (@Rouhani_ir) August 13, 2014

Separately on Instagram, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Mirzakhani's death is a cause for grief for all Iranians.

 

Mirzakhani became known on the international mathematics scene as a teenager, winning gold medals at both the 1994 and 1995 International Math Olympiads -- and finished with a perfect score in the latter competition.

 

She went on to win the 2009 Blumenthal Award for the Advancement of Research in Pure Mathematics, and the 2013 Satter Prize of the American Mathematical Society.

 

Mirzakhani studied mathematics in Iran and earned a PhD degree from Harvard in 2004. She then taught at Princeton University before moving to Stanford in 2008.

 

The Fields Medal, which she won in 2014, is given out every four years, often to multiple winners aged 40 or younger.

 

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[tao]

 Maryam Mirzakhani: 'The more I spent time on maths, the more excited I got'

The first woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal prize discusses her life as a mathematician

 

Maryam Mirzakhani, professor of mathematics at Stanford University. She recently became the first woman to win the Fields Medal. Photograph: Stanford University

 

Maryam Mirzakhani has become the first woman to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics.

 

Mirzakhani, 37, is of Iranian descent and completed her PhD at Harvard in 2004. Her thesis showed how to compute the Weil-Petersson volumes of moduli spaces of bordered Riemann surfaces. Her research interests include Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry. She is currently professor of mathematics at Stanford University, and predominantly works on geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations.

What are some of your earliest memories of mathematics?

As a kid, I dreamt of becoming a writer. My most exciting pastime was reading novels; in fact, I would read anything I could find. I never thought I would pursue mathematics until my last year in high school. I grew up in a family with three siblings. My parents were always very supportive and encouraging. It was important for them that we have meaningful and satisfying professions, but they didn't care as much about success and achievement.

 

In many ways, it was a great environment for me, though these were hard times during the Iran-Iraq war. My older brother was the person who got me interested in science in general. He used to tell me what he learned in school. My first memory of mathematics is probably the time that he told me about the problem of adding numbers from 1 to 100. I think he had read in a popular science journal how Gauss solved this problem. The solution was quite fascinating for me. That was the first time I enjoyed a beautiful solution, though I couldn't find it myself.

What experiences and people were especially influential on your mathematical education?

I was very lucky in many ways. The war ended when I finished elementary school; I couldn't have had the great opportunities that I had if I had been born 10 years earlier. I went to a great high school in Tehran – Farzanegan – and had very good teachers. I met my friend Roya Beheshti during the first week of middle school. It is invaluable to have a friend who shares your interests, and it helps you stay motivated.

 

Our school was close to a street full of bookstores in Tehran. I remember how walking along this crowded street, and going to the bookstores, was so exciting for us. We couldn't skim through the books like people usually do here in a bookstore, so we would end up buying a lot of random books. Also, our school principal was a strong-willed woman who was willing to go a long way to provide us with the same opportunities as the boys' school.

 

Later, I got involved in Math Olympiads that made me think about harder problems. As a teenager, I enjoyed the challenge. But most importantly, I met many inspiring mathematicians and friends at Sharif University. The more I spent time on mathematics, the more excited I became.

Could you comment on the differences between mathematical education in Iran and in the US?

It is hard for me to comment on this question since my experience here in the US is limited to a few universities, and I know very little about the high school education here. However, I should say that the education system in Iran is not the way people might imagine here. As a graduate student at Harvard, I had to explain quite a few times that I was allowed to attend a university as a woman in Iran. While it is true that boys and girls go to separate schools up to high school, this does not prevent them from participating say in the Olympiads or the summer camps.

 

But there are many differences: In Iran you choose your major before going to college, and there is a national entrance exam for universities. Also, at least in my class in college, we were more focused on problem-solving than on taking advanced courses.

What attracted you to the particular problems you have studied?

When I entered Harvard, my background was mostly combinatorics and algebra. I had always enjoyed complex analysis, but I didn't know much about it. In retrospect, I see that I was completely clueless. I needed to learn many subjects which most undergraduate students from good universities here know.

 

I started attending the informal seminar organized by Curt McMullen. Well, most of the time I couldn't understand a word of what the speaker was saying. But I could appreciate some of the comments by Curt. I was fascinated by how he could make things simple and elegant. So I started regularly asking him questions, and thinking about problems that came out of these illuminating discussions.

 

His encouragement was invaluable. Working with Curt had a great influence on me, though now I wish I had learned more from him. By the time I graduated I had a long list of raw ideas that I wanted to explore.

Can you describe your research in accessible terms? Does it have applications within other areas?

Most problems I work on are related to geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations. In particular, I am interested in understanding hyperbolic surfaces. Sometimes properties of a fixed hyperbolic surface can be better understood by studying the moduli space that parameterises all hyperbolic structures on a given topological surface.

 

These moduli spaces have rich geometries themselves, and arise in natural and important ways in differential, hyperbolic, and algebraic geometry. There are also connections with theoretical physics, topology, and combinatorics. I find it fascinating that you can look at the same problem from different perspectives and approach it using different methods.

What do you find most rewarding or productive?

Of course, the most rewarding part is the "Aha" moment, the excitement of discovery and enjoyment of understanding something new – the feeling of being on top of a hill and having a clear view. But most of the time, doing mathematics for me is like being on a long hike with no trail and no end in sight.

 

I find discussing mathematics with colleagues of different backgrounds one of the most productive ways of making progress.

What advice would you give those who would like to know more about mathematics – what it is, what its role in society has been, and so on?

This is a difficult question. I don't think that everyone should become a mathematician, but I do believe that many students don't give mathematics a real chance. I did poorly in math for a couple of years in middle school; I was just not interested in thinking about it. I can see that without being excited mathematics can look pointless and cold. The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers.

 

< Here >

[vitorio]

Thanks for sharing such inspiring facts of this genius and extraordinarily woman 

[Sylence]

That was a shocking news..

[pc71520]

She was a true genius.

R.I.P.

[tao]

Maryam Mirzakhani: Iranian newspapers break hijab taboo in tributes

Tehran front pages run photographs of mathematician without head covering, showing her prominence overrode rules

 

Iran was in shock on Sunday after the mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman in history to win the Fields medal, maths’ Nobel prize, died of cancer aged 40.

 

Her death on Saturday in a hospital in California dominated front pages in Tehran, with a number of newspapers breaking with tradition and publishing photos of her without a head covering – a rare tribute that showed her prominence overrode rules requiring all Iranian women to be covered in public. Mirzakhani died after breast cancer spread to her bone marrow.

 

When the Stanford University professor won the Fields medal in 2014, state-run newspapers had digitally retouched her photograph to put a scarf over her head while others published a sketch showing only her face.

 

The Sunday front page of Hamshahri, a state newspaper, particularly stood out, winning praise for portraying her “the way she was”.

 

“Maths genius yielded to algebra of death,” read the daily’s headline over a calm and subdued image of Mirzakhani without a hijab. “The queen of mathematics’ eternal departure,” read the headline of Donya-ye-Eghtesad.

 

 

The Fields medal, first given in 1936 and to a total of 55 medallists to date, is awarded to exceptional talents under the age of 40 once every four years. Mirzakhani won the prize for her “outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”.

 

Christiane Rousseau, vice-president of the International Mathematics Union, said at the time it was “an extraordinary moment”. “Marie-Curie had Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry at the beginning of the 20th century, but in mathematics this is the first time we have a woman winning the most prestigious prize there is. This is a celebration for women.”

 

Firouz Naderi, an Iranian Nasa scientist, a former programme manager for Mars exploration, paid his tribute on Instagram. “A light was turned off today, it breaks my heart… Gone far too soon.” He later tweeted: “A genius? Yes. But also a daughter, a mother and a wife.”

 

There was an exceptional outpouring of tributes to Mirzakhani both in Iran and outside. Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said: “The grievous passing of Maryam Mirzakhani, the eminent Iranian and world-renowned mathematician, is very much heartrending.” Rouhani also retweeted an image of her bare-headed.

 

In another sign that Mirzakhani was breaking more taboos even after her death, a group of parliamentarians in Iran on Sunday urged the speeding up of an amendment to a law that would allow children of Iranian mothers married to foreigners to be given Iranian nationality.

 

Mirzakhani is survived by her Czech scientist husband and her daughter but a marriage between an Iranian woman and a non-Muslim man was previously not recognised, complicating visits to Iran by their children.

 

Fars news agency reported on Sunday that 60 MPs were pressing for the amendments so that Mirzakhani’s daughter could visit Iran.

 

Mirzakhanai was born and raised in Iran. She studied at Tehran’s prestigious Sharif university and later finished a PhD at Harvard in 2004.

 

In February 1998, a bus bringing the mathematical elite of Tehran’s Sharif University back from a competition in the western city of Ahwaz skidded out of control and crashed into a ravine. Seven award-winning mathematicians and two drivers lost their lives in the crash. One of the survivors was Maryam Mirzakhani.

 

Mirzakhani and at least two other survivors later left their country, underlying Iran’s long-standing problem with brain drain.

“Maryam is gone far too soon, but her impact will live on for the thousands of women she inspired to pursue math and science,” said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford University. “Maryam was a brilliant mathematical theorist, and also a humble person who accepted honours only with the hope that it might encourage others to follow her path. Her contributions as both a scholar and a role model are significant and enduring, and she will be dearly missed here at Stanford and around the world.”

 

Edward Frenkel, UC Berkeley professor and the author of the New York Times bestseller Love and Math, tweeted: “RIP #MaryamMirzakhani – a great mathematician and wonderful human being who broke a glass ceiling and inspired many, men and women alike.”

 

According to Stanford, “Mirzakhani specialised in theoretical mathematics that read like a foreign language by those outside of mathematics: moduli spaces, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, Ergodic theory and symplectic geometry.” She predominantly worked on geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations.

 

In a rare 2008 interview with the Clay Mathematics Institute, Mirzakhani said as a kid she dreamt of becoming a writer and read novels in her past time and did poorly at math at school. “I never thought I would pursue mathematics until my last year in high school,” she said.

 

“My older brother was the person who got me interested in science in general. He used to tell me what he learned in school. My first memory of mathematics is probably the time that he told me about the problem of adding numbers from 1 to 100.” (The answer is 5,050 and the trick is to look at pairs that add up to 101.)

 

< Here >

[tao]

Iranian genius is mourned by Tehran
 

Maryam Mirzakhani, who won the Fields Medal in 2014, has been embraced as a hero in Iran following her death, aged 40, from cancer at the weekend

 

Few academic careers are as short yet prolific and brilliant as that of the globally-recognized Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, who died at a Californian hospital on Saturday, aged 40.

 

She rose to international fame by winning the most prestigious scientific award in her field during the summer of 2014, one year after being diagnosed with breast cancer that subsequently spread to her bone marrow, resulting in her untimely death on 15 July 2017.

 

Eulogy and praise have poured on the family home in Tehran from scientists and intellectuals around the world, with Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne saying her influence would live in the “thousands of women she inspired” around the globe, especially those who dream of pursuing academic careers in math and science — two areas that are frowned upon for women in conservative societies across the Arab and Muslim Worlds.

 

 

Iranian newspapers broke a strict taboo over the weekend, publishing front page photographs of Mirzakhani with no hijab. This was starkly different from their behavior three years ago, when she was awarded the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel Prize for mathematicians but given to geniuses under the age of 40 only. Iranians were extremely proud that one of theirs was being recognized at such an international level. Iranian dailies Photoshopped her picture, however, so that she was wearing a hijab, in accordance with the country’s strict dress code.

 

They have been far more open following her death, with one state-newspaper coining her “The Queen of Mathematics.” Others compared her with her Persian forerunner Khwarizmi (780-850) a renowned scientist of the Abbasid Era whose name provides the Spanish word quarismo, and the Portuguese algorismo – both of which mean “digit.”

 

Iranian academics are demanding that her name be formally attached to scientific theories she helped promote or study, while one newspaper compared her 2014 award with Marie Curie’s winning of the Nobel in physics and chemistry back in 1903.

 

The Iranian tributes were led by President Hasan Rouhani, who posted a photo of Mirzakhani on Instagram, saying that her “grievous passing… is very much heartrending.”  Even Arabic media accustomed to being aggressively anti-Iranian, including the London-based al-Hayat and Asharq Alawsat, devoted front page space to giving praise and homage to her. They added a political twist, however, saying that her success in the US was a result of the massive brain drain that had crippled Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which happened when Mirzakhani was just two years old.

 

Dr. Mirzakhani was born in Tehran on 3 May 1977, where she attended the all-girl Farzanegan School, reserved for exceptionally gifted students. Speaking of her childhood in 2008, she said that she had always dreamt of becoming a writer, rather than a scientist, and actually scored poorly in math while at school. “I never thought I would pursue mathematics until my last year in high school,” she said, citing her older brother as influencing her decision. “My first memory of mathematics is probably the time that he told me about the problem of adding [all] numbers from 1 to 100.” (The trick is to look at pairs that add up to 101, producing an answer of 5,050.) The young Mirzakhani grew up in the middle of the terrible conflict between her country and Iraq, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians, including relatives and family friends. “I think I was the lucky generation, because I was a teenager when things became more stable,” she recalled many years later.

 

Mirzakhani participated in the 1994 International Mathematical Olympiad, becoming the first Iranian to achieve a perfect score and to win two gold medals. Mirzakhani then studied math at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, a prestigious research institution, before going to Harvard, where she obtained a PhD in 2004. Before leaving Tehran, in February 1998, Mirzakhani survived a bus crash that killed seven award-winning Iranian mathematicians who were riding with her. In the US she became a Research Fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University, before moving to Stanford in 2008, where she continued to teach and work until her death.

 

< Here >

[tao]

 

Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani (third girl from the right) and other Iranian students take photo with former late president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, prior to departing for the 1995 Math Olympiads in Canada.  

 

[tao]

Maryam Mirzakhani -- Iranian mathematician

 

Maryam Mirzakhani (Persian: مریم میرزاخانی‎‎‎; 3 May 1977 – 15 July 2017) was an Iranian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Her research topics include Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry.

 

On 13 August 2014, Mirzakhani became both the first woman and the first Iranian honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics. The award committee cited her work in "the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces".

Early life and education

Mirzakhani was born on 3 May 1977 in Tehran, Iran. She attended Farzanegan School there, part of the National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents.

 

In 1994, Mirzakhani won a gold medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad, the first female Iranian student to do so. In the 1995 International Mathematical Olympiad, she became the first Iranian student to achieve a perfect score and to win two gold medals.

 

She obtained her BSc in mathematics (1999) from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. She went to the United States for graduate work, earning a PhD from Harvard University in 2004, where she worked under the supervision of the Fields Medalist Curtis McMullen.

Career

Mirzakhani was a 2004 research fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University. In 2008 she became a professor at Stanford University.

Research work

Mirzakhani has made several contributions to the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. In her early work, Mirzakhani discovered a formula expressing the volume of a moduli space with a given genus as a polynomial in the number of boundary components. This led her to obtain a new proof for the formula discovered by Edward Witten and Maxim Kontsevich on the intersection numbers of tautological classes on moduli space, as well as an asymptotic formula for the growth of the number of simple closed geodesics on a compact hyperbolic surface, generalizing the theorem of the three geodesics for spherical surfaces. Her subsequent work has focused on Teichmüller dynamics of moduli space. In particular, she was able to prove the long-standing conjecture that William Thurston's earthquake flow on Teichmüller space is ergodic.

Most recently as of 2014, with Alex Eskin and with input from Amir Mohammadi, Mirzakhani proved that complex geodesics and their closures in moduli space are surprisingly regular, rather than irregular or fractal. The closures of complex geodesics are algebraic objects defined in terms of polynomials and therefore they have certain rigidity properties, which is analogous to a celebrated result that Marina Ratner arrived at during the 1990s. The International Mathematical Union said in its press release that, "It is astounding to find that the rigidity in homogeneous spaces has an echo in the inhomogeneous world of moduli space."

 

Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 for "her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces". The award was made in Seoul at the International Congress of Mathematicians on 13 August.

 

At the time of the award, Jordan Ellenberg explained her research to a popular audience:

... [Her] work expertly blends dynamics with geometry. Among other things, she studies billiards. But now, in a move very characteristic of modern mathematics, it gets kind of meta: She considers not just one billiard table, but the universe of all possible billiard tables. And the kind of dynamics she studies doesn't directly concern the motion of the billiards on the table, but instead a transformation of the billiard table itself, which is changing its shape in a rule-governed way; if you like, the table itself moves like a strange planet around the universe of all possible tables ... This isn't the kind of thing you do to win at pool, but it's the kind of thing you do to win a Fields Medal. And it's what you need to do in order to expose the dynamics at the heart of geometry; for there's no question that they're there.

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran congratulated her.

Personal life

Mirzakhani was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. After four years, it spread to her bone marrow. She died on 15 July 2017.

 

She was survived by her husband Jan Vondrák, a Czech theoretical computer scientist and applied mathematician who is an associate professor at Stanford University, and a daughter named Anahita.

Awards and honors

• IPM Fellowship, Tehran, Iran, 1995–99
• Merit fellowship Harvard University, 2003
• Harvard Junior Fellowship Harvard University, 2003
• Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow 2004
• 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. "Presented every two years by the American Mathematical Society, the Satter Prize recognizes an outstanding contribution to mathematics research by a woman in the preceding six years. The prize was awarded on Thursday, 10 January 2013, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego."
• Named one of Nature's ten "people who mattered" of 2014.
• Clay Research Award 2014
• Plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM 2014)
• Fields Medal 2014
• Elected foreign associate to the French Academy of Science 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.

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[truemate]

9 hours ago, adi said:

 

Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani (third girl from the right) and other Iranian students take photo with former late president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, prior to departing for the 1995 Math Olympiads in Canada.  

 

 

those round tyre style flower bouquet  is mostly used on dead peoples coffin..funeral :/

that front ayatullah miss it.