A woman has bagged a Fields Medal for mathematics, for the first time in its 78-year history.
Maryam Mirzakhani from Iran, who is currently a professor at Stanford, completed her doctorate at Harvard and “studies the geometry of moduli space, a complex geometric and algebraic entity that might be described as a universe in which every point is itself a universe.”
The Fields Medal, like the Nobel Peace Prize in mathematics, is awarded to four honourees at a time every four years, to recipients under 40 years of age.
According to New Scientist, in her work Mirzakhani:
‘described the number of ways a beam of light can travel a closed loop in a two-dimensional universe. To answer the question, it turns out, you cannot just stay in your “home” universe – you have to understand how to navigate the entire multiverse. Mirzakhani has shown mathematicians new ways to navigate these spaces.’
The mathematician added that she likes to work at her own ‘tortoise’ pace, saying:
“I don’t get easily disappointed. I’m quite confident, in some sense,” adding that “months or years later, you see very different aspects” of a problem.
