BY SAMIRA RASUL
MARYAM MIRZAKHANI, the mathematics genius died on July 14, 2017 in California at the age of 40 after battling with breast cancer for years.
People around the world mourn the early death of this gifted, young, Muslim mathematician as many see it as a light extinguished in the Muslim world.
[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3,5″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ]Mirzakhani received the prestigious Fields Medal in 2014, which is as equivalent to the Nobel prize for mathematicians.
Mirzakhani is the first and only woman and the first Muslim to have received this award after 52 male recipients since the commencement of the award.
Her extraordinary contribution in complex geometry and dynamics led her to win at the International Congress of Mathematicians in South Korea.
With this honourable achievement, Mirzakhni broke the glass ceiling and set a new bar of success for women in STEM.
As a young girl in Iran, Mirzakhani had faced her share of obligations in her rise.
Despite discouragement from her middle school teacher, she represented Iran in the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1994 and 1995 as a high school student and won gold.
Later she graduated from Tehran’s Sharif University and continued post-graduate studies in Harvard University and worked as a fellow in the Princeton University until 2004.
She was a professor of Mathematics in Stanford University until her death.
She specialised in theoretical mathematics that read like a foreign language to those outside of mathematics: moduli spaces, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, Ergodic theory and symplectic geometry.
Although her death is a great loss for the world, her contributions will live to be appreciated by mathematicians of all generations.
Her loss was felt greatly, especially among the mathematicians, as they sent emails to each other to share the grief.
“A light was turned off today …. far too soon. Breaks my heart,” said former NASA scientist Firouz Naderi in his tweet.
Later in another tweet he added, “A genius? Yes. But also a daughter, a mother and a wife.”
Her work was described as ‘painting’ by her six-year-old daughter Anahita.
Mirzakhani once said in a video interview organised by Simons Foundation, “You have to spend some energy and effort to see the beauty of math.”
In a science stream where Mathematics, which is dominated by men, Mirzakhani left her footprint in a very unique fashion.
“Her contributions as both a scholar and a role model are significant and enduring and she will be dearly missed here at Stanford and around the world,” says Stanford University President Marc Tessier Lavigne in the news statement released by the university.
“Maryam is gone far too soon but her impact will live on for the thousands of women she inspired to pursue math and science,” he said.
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