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Maryam Mirzakhani

Four mathematicians were today awarded the Fields Medal, including Iranian Maryam Mirzakhani, the first female mathematician to be given the honor that's often called math's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Mirzakhani, 37, is a professor at Stanford University, and was honored in Seoul, South Korea, for her "striking and highly original contributions to geometry and dynamical systems."

Mirzakhani was born in Tehran in 1977 and lived there until she began her doctoral work at Harvard. She earned a bachelor's degree from Tehran's Sharif University of Technology in 1999.

In the statement, she said that as a young girl she dreamed of becoming a writer. But by high school, math problems and proofs had caught her attention.

The Fields Medal, officially the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, was established in 1936, and is awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union. 

via The NPR