
Maryam Mirzakhani - mmoez
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani
======
fermenflo
Mirzakhani will always have a special place in my heart.

I was an undergraduate mathematics student when I discovered her work. It was
a paper on closed geodesics and there was something special about her writing.
Her approaches were simple an elegant -the kind that made you, as a reader,
feel accomplished for understanding such a complex subject. It wasn't long
until she was placed among other grand mathematicians that I looked up to.

A year later she died. I wasn't even aware of her health. It sucked to see an
idol go so young. But it's incredible what she accomplished within her
lifetime. She'll always be one of the greatest.

~~~
benrbray
For the curious, do you have a link to the paper?

~~~
fermenflo
I don't remember if this is the _exact_ paper but as united893 already posted,
the paper was probably:

[https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-
content/uploads/annals-...](https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-
content/uploads/annals-v168-n1-p03.pdf)

Long story short: Imagine you have an object, place an ant on the surface of
the object, and then instruct the ant to walk in a straight line forever. Will
the ant ever end up in the same place it started (with the same initial
direction)? If so, then it has formed a closed geodesic. For some objects, the
answer is obvious. For a perfect sphere, the answer is always yes. In fact,
any sphere-like object (imagine warping/contorting a sphere without tearing or
poking holes in it) will always have at least 3 such closed geodesics:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorem_of_the_three_geodesics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorem_of_the_three_geodesics).

Miriam managed to construct an amazing formula that, when given the number of
holes in an object, can give you the probability of forming a closed geodesic
when starting from a random point in a random direction.

This: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx-
kAlEpiZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx-kAlEpiZk) is a great video that
goes over what I explained and a couple other great achievements of hers.
Worth a watch.

------
EndXA
> Mirzakhani described herself as a "slow" mathematician, saying that "you
> have to spend some energy and effort to see the beauty of math." To solve
> problems, Mirzakhani would draw doodles on sheets of paper and write
> mathematical formulas around the drawings. Her daughter described her
> mother's work as "painting".

> She declared: "I don't have any particular recipe [for developing new
> proofs] ... It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the
> knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some
> luck, you might find a way out."

~~~
krupan
As I read that I thought, "It would be awesome to see those doodles." A quick
image search did not disappoint:

[https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maryam-mirzakhani-
fields-w...](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maryam-mirzakhani-fields-
winner-doodler-79848)

~~~
pugworthy
Not sure if others are having the same problem, but as soon as I try to scroll
down on that page, it gets replaced by a subscribe request or something like
that.

Here are some direct links to the 3 images in that article...

[https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2014/08/Maryam-
Mirza...](https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2014/08/Maryam-Mirzakhani-
doodle-aug-2014-02.png)

[https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2014/08/Maryam-
Mirza...](https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2014/08/Maryam-Mirzakhani-
doodle-aug-2014.png)

[https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2014/08/Maryam-
Mirza...](https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2014/08/Maryam-Mirzakhani-
doodle-aug-2014-03-e1408246269295.png)

------
acangiano
My mental picture of her is that of a genius on the floor drawing on huge
pieces of paper.

It comes from this short article about her:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/28/magazine/the-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/28/magazine/the-
lives-they-lived-maryam-mirzakhani.html)

~~~
kharak
Great article, thanks. It fills me with melancholy, knowing that such a
brilliant mind left this world too soon.

------
hi41
Deep respect for folks such as Maryam. I admit I don't know much of math or
for that matter much of anything. After she won the award I remember visiting
the Fields medal website and reading a short synopsis of her work. I couldn't
understand even one sentence fully. These guys work is so amazing and so far
from one's own field. Such brilliant people we have... I felt very sad and
wept when she passed away. If the Lord showed more mercy, she could have
continued to bring forth even more amazing work and humanity would have
flourished because of it.

------
omegaworks
Imagine how many more people like Maryam are impacted by the merciless
sanctions we've put upon Iran. Access to medicine, food and economic
opportunity have precipitously declined as a direct result[1] of them.

Persian people brought algebraic concepts to Europe in the 9th century. We
must not lose sight of what could be if the western world understood the value
of that connection.

1\. [https://www.thenation.com/article/world/iran-sanctions-
human...](https://www.thenation.com/article/world/iran-sanctions-humanitarian-
crisis/)

~~~
Myrmornis
I was reading the rules for entry for a Kaggle competition the other day and I
saw that Iranians are banned from entering. It’s pretty
depressing/angering/pathetic. At some point a company just has to say fuck you
to their government if their laws are inappropriate.

------
zohvek
Gone at only 40 years of age. What an incredible shame. How much more would
she have been able to unravel had she lived longer. RIP.

~~~
behnamoh
This is exactly one of the sub-optimalities and inefficiencies of the world.
The good go, the bad stay. It's so sad.

------
olvy0
Another excellent article about her from 2014 is here:

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/maryam-mirzakhani-is-first-
wo...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/maryam-mirzakhani-is-first-woman-fields-
medalist-20140812/)

It also tries to explain her work in layman terms, fwiw.

------
xenocratus
I remember reading about it here:
[https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/maryam-
mirzakhani-...](https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/maryam-
mirzakhani-1977-2017/)

Always a tragic death to be reminded of. :(

------
CodeSheikh
RIP(روحش شاد باشه) Maryam and thanks for your contributions.

------
dang
Some threads from 2017:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14793217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14793217)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776357)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778588)

A bit from 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180195)

------
DoreenMichele
When she won the Fields medal, I did some digging to try to find a layman's
explanation of her math. It wasn't easy to find such and other people were
expressing bewilderment as to what exactly she did:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8173988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8173988)

------
samasblack
Alex Wright recently wrote a nice mathematical exposition on some of her work
relating to Riemann surfaces, targeted at "a broad audience of non-experts."

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01753](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01753)

------
lunchables
It's really annoying that there's nothing other than her name in the headline.
There are a lot of articles on HN I don't click on because there's no
information and I don't have time to open every article just to figure out if
I want to read it. Is it too much to ask that the post include at least some
relevant information?

~~~
lincolnq
Resist the urge to be annoyed by this, and use it as an opportunity to
practice a useful skill: that of searching for value from something where the
value isn’t highlighted upfront.

Most of today’s media tends to “tell you what to think” in advance of reading
the story, and I would argue that is a big piece of the (poorly defined)
problems with society today.

I’m glad you wrote your comment, because it helped me realize why it’s
worthwhile to me to have this sort of article posted on HN — I think it’s a
valuable skill, to figure out what to think (instead of being told it
upfront).

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Absolutely. Within the scientific community, there are excellent people, who
if you tell them what you are doing and why it is important, will respond by
telling you all the other ways your work is important.

These people are practicing the skill you are note: identifying value in
things that others have not identified.

