Vice President for women and family affairs welcomed designating Iranian-born Stanford University professor Maryam Mirzakhani’s birthday as a day for celebrating women in mathematics.
“A Holiday for Celebrating Women in Mathematics, at 2018 World Meeting for Mathematics, Iranian Mathematical Society proposed designating Maryam Mirzakhani’s birthday (May 12) as day for celebrating women in mathematics,” Masoumeh Ebtekar wrote in her Twitter account on Thursday.
According to US media ‘Forbes’, “At the 2018 World Meeting for Women in Mathematics, (WM)^2 held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Women’s Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Society proposed designating Maryam Mirzakhani’s birthday (May 12) as a day for celebrating women in mathematics.”
“The proposal was approved. Globally, several organizations for women in mathematics support the initiative, including European Women in Mathematics, the Association for Women in Mathematics, the African Women in Mathematics Association, the Colectivo de Mujeres Matemáticas de Chile (Collective of Women Mathematicians in Chile) and Indian Women and Mathematics,” Forbes added.
The Iranian winner of Fields Medal, also known as the Nobel Prize of mathematics, and Stanford University professor, Mirzakhani, passed away at 40 in a hospital in the US on July 14, 2017.
In 1994, Mirzakhani won a gold medal in the Hong Kong International Mathematical Olympiad, to be the first female Iranian student to have received a gold medal. In the 1995 Toronto International Mathematical Olympiad, she became the first Iranian student to receive a perfect score and to win two gold medals.
She obtained her BSc in mathematics (1999) from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran. She went to the US and got a PhD from Harvard University in 2004.
Mirzakhani (b. May 3, 1977) was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, a year before she set the record of the first ever woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal in mathematics.