Maryam Mirzakhani — Mothers in Science

Iranian-born Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017) was one of the greatest mathematicians of her generation. She was also a mother. In 2014, Mirzakhani became the first and only woman to date to win the prestigious Fields Medal, often described as Math’s Nobel Prize, the highest honor for a mathematician. She won the award for her “outstanding contributions to research on the dynamics and geometry of mathematical objects called Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.”

Born in Tehran, Mirzakhani was a voracious reader as a child and wanted to become a writer, but mathematics became her passion. As a teenager, she won several gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad, achieving a perfect score in 1995. These achievements allowed her to pursue pure mathematics studies, which was not an easy career choice for women in Iran.

During her undergraduate degree at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, she was recognised by the American Mathematical Society for her work in developing a proof for a theorem of Schur. She earned her PhD in 2004 from Harvard University (USA) supervised by the Fields medallist Curtis T. McMullen, and she then worked as a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute research fellow and an assistant professor of mathematics a Princeton University . Just a few years later, at the age of 31, she was hired as a full professor at Stanford University.

Mirzakhani’s PhD thesis was considered a masterpiece; she solved not one but two complex problems and published in the three highest-impact journals in mathematics- something most mathematicians won’t achieve in their lifetime. She was a mathematical genius but also a great teacher and empathetic supervisor. Mirzakhani was humble and grounded, and she generously shared her ideas with the community and helped others to further their careers.

Mirzakhani had one daughter, who she raised with her husband Jan Vondrák, also a mathematician. She once said ““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.” To solve problems, Mirzakhani would draw doodles on large sheets of paper on the floor and write mathematical formulas around the drawings. Her daughter once described her mother's work as "paintings".

She died of metastatic breast cancer at just 40 years old, leaving her husband and 6-year-old daughter. After her death, she was acknowledged in many ways, such as being named in 2020 by UN Women as one of seven female scientists (dead or alive) who have shaped the world, and in 2019 the Breakthrough Prize Foundation created the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize to be awarded to outstanding young female researchers in the field of mathematics each year.