Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician and a Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University. She was one of the world’s leading experts in geometry and dynamical systems. Her beautiful and astonishing results and her life and career are an inspiration for everyone, women and men, to pursue their dreams in science. She died tragically from cancer in 2017 at the early age of 40.

In 2014, Maryam was awarded the Fields Medal for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces, becoming the first woman, and the first Iranian, to be recognised for her mathematical achievements by this top mathematical prize.