Giants in History: Maryam Mirzakhani

Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani (12 May 1977 – 14 July 2017) was the first and only woman and Iranian to date to win the Fields Medal in 2014 for her work on curved surfaces. She liked to focus on particularly difficult areas of theoretical mathematics and geometry, and in her short life, made several important contributions to understanding mathematical objects called Riemann surfaces. Describing herself as a “slow” mathematician who appreciated the beauty in mathematics, Mirzakhani often drew doodles on sheets of paper and wrote mathematical formulas around the drawings.