Maryam Mirzakhani is first woman to win Fields Medal

An Iranian named Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win the coveted Fields Medal, the mathematical field's equivalent to a Nobel Prize.

A Stanford press release announced the historic event. Mirzakhani is a professor at the California college. The prize's full name is the International Medal for Discoveries in Mathematics. Mirzakhani is the first Stanford professor to win the award since Paul Cohen in 1966.

Celebrating the win, Mirzakhani said, "This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians. I am sure there will be many more women winning this kind of award in coming years."

The prize was awarded for Mirzakhani's work regarding the symmetry of curved surfaces such as spheres and hyperbolic objects. The work is theoretical and considered, "pure mathematics," but has implications for advanced quantum physics, according to Stanford.

Stanford President John Hennssy hailed Mirzakhani's achievement by saying, "On behalf of the entire Stanford community, I congratulate Maryam on this incredible recognition, the highest honor in her discipline, the first ever granted to a woman. We are proud of her achievements, and of the work taking place in our math department and among our faculty. We hope it will serve as an inspiration to many aspiring mathematicians."

Mirzakhani will be presented with her medal at the Aug. 13 meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul, South Korea.

In the statement, Mirzakhani also described how she felt about mathematics as a young high school student. She said as a child she felt, "It is fun - it's like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case. I felt that this was something I could do, and I wanted to pursue this path."

The prize was established in 1936, and is awarded every four years.