[Turkmath:9990] field medals - 2014

[Mustafa Akgul]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/science/top-math-prize-has-its-first-female-winner.html?src=twr&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0
 Science <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html> Top Math Prize
Has Its First Female Winner

By KENNETH CHANG
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/kenneth_chang/index.html>AUG.
12, 2014
   Photo
  Winners of the 2014 Fields Medal in Mathematics, from left: Maryam
Mirzakhani, Artur Avila, Manjul Bhargava and Martin Hairer. Credit
International Mathematical Union
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Continue reading the main story
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/science/top-math-prize-has-its-first-female-winner.html?src=twr&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0#story-continues-1>

An Iranian mathematician is the first woman ever to receive a Fields Medal,
often considered to be mathematics' equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

The recipient, Maryam Mirzakhani, a professor at Stanford, was one of four
scheduled to be honored on Wednesday at the International Congress of
Mathematicians <http://www.icm2014.org/> in Seoul, South Korea.

The Fields Medal is given every four years, and several can be awarded at
once. The other recipients this year are Artur Avila of the National
Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics in Brazil and the National Center
for Scientific Research in France; Manjul Bhargava of Princeton University;
and Martin Hairer of the University of Warwick in England.

The 52 medalists from previous years were all men.

"This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female
scientists and mathematicians," Dr. Mirzakhani was quoted as saying in a
Stanford news release on Tuesday. "I am sure there will be many more women
winning this kind of award in coming years."

Ingrid Daubechies, a professor of mathematics at Duke and president of
the International
Mathematical Union <http://www.mathunion.org/>, called the news "a great
joy" in an email.

"All researchers in mathematics will tell you that there is no difference
between the math done by a woman or a man, and of course the decision of
the Fields Medal committee is based only on the results of each candidate,"
she wrote. "That said, I bet the vast majority of the mathematicians in the
world will be happy that it will no longer be possible to say that 'the
Fields Medal has always been awarded only to men.' "

Much of the research by Dr. Mirzakhani, who was born in Tehran in 1977, has
involved the behavior of dynamical systems. There are no exact mathematical
solutions for many dynamical systems, even simple ones.

"What Maryam discovered is that in another regime, the dynamical orbits are
tightly constrained to follow algebraic laws," said Curtis T. McMullen, a
professor at Harvard who was Dr. Mirzakhani's doctoral adviser. "These
dynamical systems describe surfaces with many handles, like pretzels, whose
shape is evolving over time by twisting and stretching in a precise way.
They are related to billiards on tables that are not rectangular but still
polygonal, like the regular octagon."

Dr. Avila, 35, investigated a different area of dynamical systems,
including an understanding of fractals. Dr. Bhargava, 40, was recognized
for new methods in the geometry of numbers, especially prime numbers, and
Dr. Hairer, 38, made advances in the study of the effect of random noise on
partial differential equations, capturing the effect of turbulence on ocean
currents or the flow of air around airplane wings.

While women have reached parity in many academic fields, mathematics is
still dominated by men, who earn about 70 percent of the doctoral degrees.
The disparity is even more striking at the highest echelons. Since 2003,
the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the Abel Prize,
recognizing outstanding mathematicians with a monetary award of about $1
million; all 14 recipients so far are men. No woman has won the Wolf Prize
in Mathematics, another prestigious award.

The Fields Medal was conceived by John Charles Fields, a Canadian
mathematician, "in recognition of work already done" and as "an
encouragement for further achievement." Judges have interpreted the terms
of the Fields trust to mean that the award should usually be limited to
mathematicians age 40 or younger.

Dr. McMullen, himself a Fields medalist, did not speculate on why it had
taken so long for a woman to be recognized. "I would prefer to look forward
and celebrate this occasion," he said, "and see it as a sign of positive
trends in society and in science."
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