Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017). Wright, A. Science, 357(6353):758, August, 2017.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
On 14 July, Maryam Mirzakhani, a luminary in pure mathematics, died of cancer at the age of 40. Her achievements had been most recently honored in 2014 by the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics. [Excerpt] [...] There are many possible uniformly curved shapes into which the surface can be bent. These shapes are called hyperbolic metrics and exhibit the non-Euclidean geometry discovered in the 1800s after 2000 years of attempts to prove its nonexistence. The plethora of all possible hyperbolic metrics on a surface populate a universe called a moduli space, which is itself a higher-dimensional version of a surface and is one of the focal points of modern mathematics and theoretical physics. Mirzakhani's work illuminates the geometry of moduli spaces. [...] [] More recently, with Alex Eskin and Amir Mohammadi, Mirzakhani considered surfaces that can be built from flat puzzle pieces instead of saddle-shaped ones. [...] For decades, mathematicians had tried to understand the geometries resulting from such stretching and shearing, fearing that perhaps the answer might be so intricate and complicated as to be beyond human understanding. In a stunning achievement spanning hundreds of pages, Eskin, Mirzakhani, and Mohammadi showed that, instead, the answers are so tame that mathematicians can hope to detail every possibility. Some call the result the '' magic wand theorem'' because of its seemingly endless applicability to more concrete problems [...] [] Mathematicians working in pairs often fall into '' good cop, bad cop'' roles, in which the more optimistic one proposes daring plans and dreams of success, and the more grounded one tempers this optimism by looking for pitfalls and providing an ongoing reality check. Mirzakhani was always the good cop. During lunch breaks separating multihour sessions at the blackboard, she would joke that the true time to complete a project could be obtained by doubling the estimate and then changing the units from days to weeks, weeks to months, or even months to years. [...]
@article{wrightMaryamMirzakhani197720172017,
  title = {Maryam {{Mirzakhani}} (1977-2017)},
  author = {Wright, Alex},
  year = {2017},
  month = aug,
  volume = {357},
  pages = {758},
  issn = {1095-9203},
  doi = {10.1126/science.aao6074},
  abstract = {On 14 July, Maryam Mirzakhani, a luminary in pure mathematics, died of cancer at the age of 40. Her achievements had been most recently honored in 2014 by the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics.

[Excerpt] [...] There are many possible uniformly curved shapes into which the surface can be bent. These shapes are called hyperbolic metrics and exhibit the non-Euclidean geometry discovered in the 1800s after 2000 years of attempts to prove its nonexistence. The plethora of all possible hyperbolic metrics on a surface populate a universe called a moduli space, which is itself a higher-dimensional version of a surface and is one of the focal points of modern mathematics and theoretical physics. Mirzakhani's work illuminates the geometry of moduli spaces. [...]

[] More recently, with Alex Eskin and Amir Mohammadi, Mirzakhani considered surfaces that can be built from flat puzzle pieces instead of saddle-shaped ones. [...] For decades, mathematicians had tried to understand the geometries resulting from such stretching and shearing, fearing that perhaps the answer might be so intricate and complicated as to be beyond human understanding. In a stunning achievement spanning hundreds of pages, Eskin, Mirzakhani, and Mohammadi showed that, instead, the answers are so tame that mathematicians can hope to detail every possibility. Some call the result the '' magic wand theorem'' because of its seemingly endless applicability to more concrete problems [...]

[] Mathematicians working in pairs often fall into '' good cop, bad cop'' roles, in which the more optimistic one proposes daring plans and dreams of success, and the more grounded one tempers this optimism by looking for pitfalls and providing an ongoing reality check. Mirzakhani was always the good cop. During lunch breaks separating multihour sessions at the blackboard, she would joke that the true time to complete a project could be obtained by doubling the estimate and then changing the units from days to weeks, weeks to months, or even months to years. [...]},
  journal = {Science},
  keywords = {*imported-from-citeulike-INRMM,~INRMM-MiD:c-14420487,~to-add-doi-URL,mathematics,publish-or-perish,research-management,short-term-vs-long-term,team-diversity,theoretical-approach},
  lccn = {INRMM-MiD:c-14420487},
  number = {6353}
}

Downloads: 0