MOTW - Maryam Mirzakhani

For the month of March, in honor of Women's History Month, I will be featuring female mathematicians who contributed to the field.

The Mathematician of the day is Maryam Mirzakhani, 1977-2017

Iranian-born Maryam Mirzakhani was one of the greatest mathematicians of her generation, making exceptional contributions to the study of the dynamics and geometry of mathematical objects called Riemann surfaces.

She was a professor at Stanford University and held a Ph.D. from Harvard University. In 2014, she was the first woman, and first Iranian, to be awarded a Fields Medal (also known as the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics....i.e. a BIG DEAL! ) for “her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”.