• Home
  • News
  • Longform
  • Life
    • Jeans
    • Madam Zeenat’s Feminist Tarot
  • Health
  • Work
  • Culture
    • Books
    • Art
    • Music
    • Fashion
    • Cinema
    • TV
  • Sports
  • Kranti
  • Vaanthi
  • The FAK
  • About
    • Submissions
  • Home
  • News
  • Longform
  • Life
    • Jeans
    • Madam Zeenat’s Feminist Tarot
  • Health
  • Work
  • Culture
    • Books
    • Art
    • Music
    • Fashion
    • Cinema
    • TV
  • Sports
  • Kranti
  • Vaanthi
  • The FAK
  • About
    • Submissions
HomeNewsMathematician Maryam Mirzakhani Has Broken Taboos ...

Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani Has Broken Taboos in Iran Even after Her Death

July 17, 2017

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Maryam Mirzakhani. Photo courtesy Maryam Mirzakhani Instagram page

Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, a Stanford University professor and the only female winner of the Fields medal (which is like the Nobel Prize for mathematics, except it’s awarded once in four years to people under the age of 40) passed away in a hospital in California on Saturday, after cancer in her breast spread to her bone marrow. She was only 40 years old.

It’s been said that the work she won the Fields medal for will change the future understanding of how the universe was formed. Even Stanford University’s own statement on her work seemed well-aware of her genius, and mentioned that to people outside the field, her work and immense contributions would read like a foreign language, and it does. The work involved “moduli spaces, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, Ergodic theory and symplectic geometry”. For her thesis at Harvard University, she solved two problems that had never been solved before, and her recent work “focused on the trajectory of a billiards ball going round a polygonal table, a problem that has stumped mathematicians for a century”. Here’s a silent video of her in action.

pic.twitter.com/jyzEryCM82

— Firouz M. Naderi (@Firouz_Naderi) July 15, 2017

Upon her demise, she received tributes from people all over the world, but there’s also something particularly important and poignant in how Iranian newspapers chose to report her death. Back when she won the Fields medal in 2014, the Guardian reports that Iranian newspapers, in keeping with strict laws in the country, digitally retouched images of her face to add a hijab, while others chose to use a sketch of her with her head uncovered rather than publish such a photograph.

Now, in her death, she seems to have broken that taboo too. Everyone from the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, to a state newspaper, Hamshahri, published tributes to her that featured her image without hijab.

Of course, it should also surprise no one that Iranian newspapers ran poetic and lovely headlines on her death, like Hamshahri‘s ‘Maths genius yielded to algebra of death’, and Donya-e-Eqtesad’s ‘The queen of mathematics’ eternal departure’.

Tags: fields medal, hassan rouhani, hijab, iran, laws, Maryam Mirzakhani, mathematician, stanford university, woman

Share!
Tweet

ladiesfinger

About the author

Related Posts

The Unpleasant Meanings of Sri Lanka’s Hijab Ban

Hijabi Thrash Metal? Yes Please

Iranian Women Allowed to Watch Football in a Stadium for the First Time in 40 Years

An Orphanage Refused to Hire a Muslim Woman Because She Wears a Hijab. Wut?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Trending

Sorry. No data so far.

Subscribe to our email newsletter!

You May Also Like

  • After Payal Tadvi’s Death Can We Allow Medical Education to Continue to Pretend to be Casteless? May 28, 2019
  • Jokha Alharthi’s Man Booker Win Reminds Us of Oman’s Recent Slave-owning Past May 24, 2019
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow is Sexy, Sterile and So Burnt By Marvel May 12, 2019
  • Let Us Admit the Sins of Atishi Marlena May 10, 2019
  • 20 Questions for SC Panel that Cleared the CJI of Sexual Harassment Charges May 9, 2019


Online Bachchi, Dil Ki Sachchi

Come on over for feminist journalism.

Politics. Pop Culture. Health. Sex. Law. Books. Work.

We write what we want to read.

  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Refund Policy
  • About
  • Contact Us

Subscribe to our email newsletter!

Keep up with us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on YouTubeFollow Us on E-mail

Trending

Sorry. No data so far.

Copyright © 2018 The Ladies Finger
Subscribe to our RSS/Atom feed here