TEHRAN – The 3rd National Festival on Women and Science, which kicked off in November, announced 25 winners on Saturday.

Organized by Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran, the event was held to honor exemplary women who are active in scientific and social sections; commemorating the late Iranian mathematician, Maryam Mirzakhani.

Interested women participated in 6 groups of humanities, basic sciences, engineering, agriculture, veterinary and environment, medical sciences, art, and architecture, IRIB reported.

In this edition of the festival, 619 women competed in various scientific fields, 25 of whom were among the winners that were announced on the closing date (December 19).

Mirzakhani won a gold medal in the Hong Kong International Mathematical Olympiad, in 1994, to be the first female Iranian student to have snatched a gold medal.

In the 1995 Toronto International Mathematical Olympiad, she became the first Iranian student to win two gold medals.

She obtained her BSc in mathematics from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, in 1999. Mirzakhani then moved to the U.S. and finished a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2004.

In 2017, Mirzakhani, the winner of the Fields Medal, also known as the Nobel Prize of mathematics, succumbed to breast cancer at 40.

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