Maryam Mirzakhani (Persian: مریم میرزاخانی, pronounced [mæɾˈjæm miːɾzɑːxɑːˈniː]; 12 May 1977 – 14 July 2017) was an Iranian[5][4] mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University.

[5] On 13 August 2014, Mirzakhani was honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics,[8][9] becoming the first woman to win the prize, as well as the first Iranian.

[12] Throughout her career, she achieved milestones that cemented her reputation as one of the greatest mathematicians of her time, such as the "magic wand theorem", which tied together fields such as dynamical systems, geometry, and topology.

Her work focused on the intricate and complex dynamics of geometric structures, with particular emphasis on moduli spaces and Riemann surfaces.

Despite her death at the age of 40 due to breast cancer,[13] her legacy endures through numerous accolades in her honor, including the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize and the 12 May Initiative, both dedicated to promoting women in mathematics.

[15] As a child, she attended Tehran Farzanegan School, part of the National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET).

[16] In 1994, Mirzakhani became the first Iranian woman to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong, scoring 41 out of 42 points.

[17] The following year, in Toronto, she became the first Iranian to achieve the full score and to win two gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad.

[16] Mirzakhani and Zavareh together were the first women to compete in the Iranian National Mathematical Olympiad and won gold and silver medals in 1995, respectively.

On 17 March 1998, after attending a conference consisting of gifted individuals and former Olympiad competitors, Mirzakhani and Zavareh, along with other attendees, boarded a bus in Ahvaz en route to Tehran.

The bus fell off a cliff, killing seven of the passengers, all Sharif University students in what is remembered as a national tragedy in Iran.

Mirzakhani's early work solved the problem of counting simple closed geodesics on hyperbolic Riemann surfaces by finding a relationship to volume calculations on moduli space.

However, the analogous counting problem for simple closed geodesics remained open, despite being "the key object to unlocking the structure and geometry of the whole surface," according to University of Chicago topologist Benson Farb.

This led her to obtain a new proof for the formula discovered by Edward Witten and Maxim Kontsevich on the intersection numbers of tautological classes on moduli space.

In 2014, with Alex Eskin and with input from Amir Mohammadi, Mirzakhani proved that complex geodesics and their closures in moduli space are surprisingly regular, rather than irregular or fractal.

[35][36] The closures of complex geodesics are algebraic objects defined in terms of polynomials and therefore, they have certain rigidity properties, which is analogous to a celebrated result that Marina Ratner arrived at during the 1990s.

"[36] Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 for "her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces".

[38] At the time of the award, Jordan Ellenberg explained her research to a popular audience: [Her] work expertly blends dynamics with geometry.

[40] In 2008, Mirzakhani married Jan Vondrák, a Czech theoretical computer scientist and applied mathematician who currently is a professor at Stanford University.

Rouhani said in his message that "the unprecedented brilliance of this creative scientist and modest human being, who made Iran's name resonate in the world's scientific forums, was a turning point in showing the great will of Iranian women and young people on the path towards reaching the peaks of glory and in various international arenas.

"[24] Upon her death, several Iranian newspapers, along with President Hassan Rouhani, broke taboo and published photographs of Mirzakhani with her hair uncovered.

Although most newspapers used photographs with a dark background, digital manipulation, and even paintings to "hide" her hair,[10][48] this gesture was widely noted in the western press and on social media.

[51][52] As a result of advocacy carried out by the Women's Committee within the Iranian Mathematical Society (Persian: کمیته بانوان انجمن ریاضی ایران), the International Council for Science agreed to declare Mirzakhani's birthday, 12 May, as International Women in Mathematics Day in respect of her memory.

Additionally, Sharif University of Technology, the institute wherein Mirzakhani obtained her bachelor's, has since named their main library in the College of Mathematics after her.

[57] On 2 February 2018, Satellogic, a high-resolution Earth observation imaging and analytics company, launched a ÑuSat type micro-satellite named in honor of Mirzakhani.