Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017) was born in Tehran and taught at Stanford. She was the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded the Fields Medal, which is the highest award in mathematics, for her research into Riemann surfaces. Sadly, Mirzakhani lost her battle with breast cancer at the age of 40.
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Photo by Biblioteca UPM; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.