Fields Medal mathematics prize won by a woman (Iranian) for first time in its history

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/13/fields-medal-mathematics-prize-woman-maryam-mirzakhani
<snip>
Maryam Mirzakhani, a professor of mathematics at Stanford University in California, was named the first female winner of the Fields Medal – often described as the Nobel prize for mathematics – at a ceremony in Seoul on Wednesday morning.

Born and raised in Iran, Mirzakhani completed a PhD at Harvard in 2004. Her path into mathematics was not a given, though. As a child, her passion was not for numbers but literature. Her school in Tehran was near a street full of bookshops and because browsing was not allowed, she ended up buying a lot of random books. "I dreamed of becoming a writer," she said in an interview for Oxford University in 2008. "I never thought I would pursue mathematics before my last year in high school."

It was Mirzakhani's brother who first piqued her interest in science. He used to come home from school and talk over what he had learned. He told her the story of the German mathematician, Carl Friedrich Gauss, who displayed his precocious skills as a schoolboy when he worked out in seconds how to sum all the numbers from 1 to 100. (The answer is 5,050 and the trick is to look at pairs that add up to 101.) "That was the first time I enjoyed a beautiful solution, though I couldn't find it myself," she said.

The seed that had been sown began to germinate, with help from her school principal, a strong-willed woman who made every effort to ensure her students had the same opportunities as the boys. As a teenager, Mirzakhani took part in international mathematics olympiads and won gold medals in 1994 and in 1995. In the first, in Hong Kong, she dropped a single point. At the latter, in Toronto, she finished with a perfect score.
-------------------------------
More on this lovely story at link - congrats Maryam!!

[LeftishBrit]

1. k&r!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. "Math is hard." -- Malibu Barbie

Have a sandwich and crack a book.

[Lucky Luciano]

3. As a mathematician, I can tell you with absolute certainty that...

...math is fucking hard!

[Lochloosa]

5. Really fucking hard!

[Sunlei]

4. Congratulations, Maryam Mirzakhani!

[Skidmore]

6. I have known so many extremely gifted Iranian women

in science and engineering during my lifetime. Kudos to Maryam Mirzakhani. Yet another gifted Iranian scholar.

[malaise]

8. It's amazing how late she picked up mathematics

Real nice.

[kelliekat44]

7. Nice! nt

[whathehell]

9. Will someone please relay this information to Larry Summers?

He was removed from his post at Harvard for saying, basically, that "women can't do math",

or at least not as well men.

So glad that arrogant ass didn't get to head up the Fed.

[malaise]

10. Great post

[whathehell]

12. Thanks

and back at ya.

[bullwinkle428]

11. +1000.

[redqueen]

13. Well said. nt

[shaayecanaan]

14. I'm in love