Maryam Mirzakhani

12 May 1977 – 14 July 2017

Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician who worked on Riemann surfaces, hyperbolic geometry, moduli spaces and the dynamics of billiards and geodesic flows. A professor at Stanford University, she became in 2014 the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded the Fields Medal. She died of breast cancer in 2017 at the age of forty.

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Life events

Born in Tehran
12 May 1977
Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong
1994

She was among the first Iranian girls to compete on the national olympiad team.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Took a second olympiad gold medal with a perfect score in Toronto
1995
Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Graduated in mathematics from Sharif University of Technology
1999
Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Completed a doctorate at Harvard University
2004

Her thesis, supervised by Curtis McMullen, counted simple closed geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Held a Clay Research Fellowship and a professorship at Princeton University
2004 – 2008
Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Appointed professor of mathematics at Stanford University
2008
Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Awarded the Fields Medal in Seoul
13 August 2014

She was cited for her work on the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Died in Palo Alto, California
14 July 2017

She died of breast cancer that had spread to her bone marrow.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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