Our woman hero of May is Maryam Mirzakhani! Maryam, who was born on 12 May 1977, was an Iranian mathematician and professor of mathematics at Stanford University, Stanford, California. On 13 August 2014, Maryam was honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, often equated in stature with the Nobel Prize. The award is given only once every four years and only to mathematicians 40 years old or younger. Maryam was both the first woman and the first Iranian to be honored with the award. The award committee cited her work in “the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.” Continue reading →