Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician and a professor at Stanford University.

She became the first woman to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.

Her work was highly theoretical in nature but had implications across disciplines including quantum field theory, complex geometry, and topology.

She was elected as member of the European Academy of Engineering in 2012.