TEHRAN – Standford University held a memorial on Sunday for Maryam Mirzakhani, the Iranian genius mathematician and the first-ever female winner of the prestigious Fields Medal prize who died of breast cancer on July 14.

Entitled “In Memory of the Life and Legacy of Professor Maryam Mirzakhani”, the ceremony was hosted by Stanford Mathematics Department Mathematics Research Center.

During the event, Maryam’s family, friends and colleagues recalled their memories with her.

Some photos from different stages of her personal and academic life went on screen during the ceremony and some pieces of Persian music was also performed during the event.

At the memorial, in lieu of flowers, contributions were made to the Maryam Mirzakhani Graduate Fellowship.

The two times gold medal winner in the International Mathematical Olympiad, Mirzakhani received her Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Iran’s Sharif University of Technology in 1999 and earned a PhD degree in mathematics from Harvard University in 2004 and became full professor of mathematics at Stanford at the age of 31.

From 2004 to 2008 she was a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow and an assistant professor at Princeton University. She was a professor at Stanford University. Her honors include the 2009 Blumenthal Award for the Advancement of Research in Pure Mathematics and the 2013 Satter Prize of the American Mathematical Society.

Mirzakhani also became the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded a Fields Medal.

Her honors also include the 2009 Blumenthal Award for the Advancement of Research in Pure Mathematics and the 2013 Satter Prize of the American Mathematical Society.

She is survived by husband the Stanford computer scientist Jan Vondrák and their 6-year-old daughter Anahita.

SB/MG