Maryam Mirzakhani was a world-renowned mathematician whose exceptional contributions fundamentally reshaped geometric and dynamical systems theory. Born in Tehran, Iran in 1977, she demonstrated extraordinary mathematical talent during her youth, becoming the first female Iranian student to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1994 and achieving a perfect score with two gold medals in 1995. She earned her bachelor's degree from Sharif University of Technology in 1999 before pursuing doctoral studies at Harvard University, where she completed her dissertation under Fields Medalist Curtis McMullen in 2004. Mirzakhani served as a Clay Mathematics Institute research fellow and assistant professor at Princeton University before assuming a professorship at Stanford University in 2008, where she remained until her untimely death.
Her groundbreaking research focused on the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces, earning her the Fields Medal in 2014 as the first woman and first Iranian to receive mathematics' highest honor. The award committee specifically recognized her outstanding contributions to understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces, including spheres, tori, and hyperbolic objects through innovative approaches to Teichmüller theory and ergodic theory. Her doctoral dissertation, Simple Geodesics on Hyperbolic Surfaces and Volume of the Moduli Space of Curves, laid the foundation for seminal papers that provided new proofs of Witten's conjecture and computational methods for moduli space volumes. This work demonstrated extraordinary depth of insight, technical mastery, and creative imagination that transformed geometric mathematics with unexpected connections across multiple mathematical domains.
Mirzakhani's legacy extends far beyond her mathematical contributions, establishing her as a global icon for women in science whose influence continues to inspire new generations of mathematicians worldwide. Despite her passing in 2017 at age 40 after a battle with breast cancer, her work remains foundational in modern geometry and dynamical systems research. Several prestigious mathematics prizes now bear her name, including the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize, while her birthday is commemorated through the May 12 initiative celebrating women in mathematics globally. Her profound impact endures through both her transformative research and her role as a trailblazer who demonstrated that mathematical excellence transcends gender and national boundaries.
