Awesome Math Girls

Maryam Mirzakhani was a mathematician who became the first woman ever to win the Fields Medal in 2014. The Fields Medal is often regarded as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. All 52 previous winners of the Fields Medal have been men before 2014.

Dr. Mirzakhani was born in Iran and received her B.Sc. degree in mathematics from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard and was a professor of mathematics at Princeton University. She is currently a Stanford University Professor of Mathematics.

Dr. Mirzakhani got international recognition as a teenager when she won gold medals at the 1994 and 1995 International Math Olympiads.

She originally wanted to be a writer but developed a strong passion for solving mathematical problems in high school. “It is fun – it’s like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case,” she said. “I felt that this was something I could do, and I wanted to pursue this path.”

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