• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Maryam Mirzakhani (first ever woman to win "Nobel Prize of Math") has died at 40.

C

cameron

Member
RIP.

NPR: Maryam Mirzakhani, Prize-Winning Mathematician, Dies At 40
Nearly three years after she became the first woman to win math's equivalent of a Nobel Prize, Maryam Mirzakhani has died of breast cancer at age 40. Her death was confirmed Saturday by Stanford University, where Mirzakhani had been a professor since 2008.

Mirzakhani is survived by her husband, Jan Vondrák, and a daughter, Anahita — who once referred to her mother's work as "painting" because of the doodles and drawings that marked her process of working on proofs and problems, according to an obituary released by Stanford.

"A light was turned off today .... far too soon. Breaks my heart," former NASA scientist Firouz Naderi said in a tweet. He later added, "A genius? Yes. But also a daughter, a mother and a wife."

Naderi later posted a time-lapse video of Mirzakhani presiding over a lecture hall, filling chalkboards with a proof.
Click to expand...
Tweet: https://twitter.com/Firouz_Naderi/status/886250125512790016

Stanford University obituary/statement: http://news.stanford.edu/2017/07/15...d-mathematician-and-fields-medal-winner-dies/
The quadrennial Fields Medal, which Mirzakhani won in 2014, is the most prestigious award in mathematics, often equated in stature with the Nobel Prize. Mirzakhani specialized in theoretical mathematics that read like a foreign language by those outside of mathematics: moduli spaces, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, Ergodic theory and symplectic geometry.

Mastering these approaches allowed Mirzakhani to pursue her fascination for describing the geometric and dynamic complexities of curved surfaces—spheres, doughnut shapes and even amoebas–in as great detail as possible. Her work was highly theoretical in nature, but it could have impacts concerning the theoretical physics of how the universe came to exist and, because it could inform quantum field theory, secondary applications to engineering and material science. Within mathematics, it has implications for the study of prime numbers and cryptography.
Click to expand...
A self-professed “slow” mathematician, Mirzakhani’s colleagues describe her as ambitious, resolute and fearless in the face of problems others would not, or could not, tackle. She denied herself the easy path, choosing instead to tackle thornier issues. Her preferred method of working on a problem was to doodle on large sheets of white paper, scribbling formulas on the periphery of her drawings. Her young daughter described her mother at work as “painting.”

“You have to spend some energy and effort to see the beauty of math,” she told one reporter.

In another interview, she said of her process: “I don’t have any particular recipe [for developing new proofs] … It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out.”
Click to expand...
 
D

Deleted member 284

Unconfirmed Member
Just learned of this lady's life and her accomplishments. Sad to have not known earlier and to find out too late. RIP
 
S

slider

Member
RIP.

I remember when I was a lot younger, my brother, whilst in the throes of a PhD, explaining some mathematical concepts to me. I wish I had a mind for it because I can't remember a speck of it. But I do remember his enthusiasm and the very real feeling of "wow, that's beautiful..."
 
S

Shambalakan

Member
RIP... ;_;

Mn1ASb.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

7 Time Tetris World Champion Jonas Neubauer has Died
Social
8
2K
NathanDiego replied
[Atlantic] America Has a Drinking Problem
2 3
149
20K
Hawking Radiation replied
  • Locked
maryam mirzakhani is first woman to win ‘nobel prize of math’
7
1K
Tesseract replied
  • Locked
Maryam Mirzakhani wins Fields Medal, first woman to earn highest mathematics honor.
2
56
7K
Shogmaster replied
  • Locked
Nobel laureate chemist Roger Tsien has died at age 64
0
1K
FelixOrion replied
Top Bottom