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Maryam Mirzakhani Is the First Woman Fields Medalist

Posted by Soulskill on from the first-of-many dept.

An anonymous reader sends news that the 2014 Fields Medals have been awarded for outstanding work in the field of mathematics. The winners are Artur Avila, Manjul Bhargava, Martin Hairer, and Maryam Mirzakhani. Quanta Magazine writes, Mirzakhani is the first woman to win a Fields Medal. The gender imbalance in mathematics is long-standing and pervasive, and the Fields Medal, in particular, is ill-suited to the career arcs of many female mathematicians. It is restricted to mathematicians younger than 40, focusing on the very years during which many women dial back their careers to raise children. Mirzakhani feels certain, however, that there will be many more female Fields medalists in the future. "There are really many great female mathematicians doing great things," she said. Quanta has profiles of the other winners as well (Avila, Bhargava, Hairer), and of Rolf Nevanlinna Prize winner Subhash Khot.

7 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. here we go again... by ganjadude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    cant we just be happy for the woman instead of turning it into some gender inequality thing?

    I mean seriously this woman hit a major achievement, And its being muddled by people with an agenda, let her have her moment

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    1. Re:here we go again... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      cant we just be happy for the woman instead of turning it into some gender inequality thing?

      She commented on the "gender inequality thing" herself. She also left her homeland (Iran), in part, because she knew her gender would hold her back if she stayed. It would be nice if gender didn't matter, but in the real world, it does.

    2. Re:here we go again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Muddled? What's muddling about it? She won a Fields Medal and she is the first woman to win a Fields Medal. These are two separate, important events: as to the first, winning a Fields Medal is indicative of superlative contribution to mathematics; as to the second, ~50% of the human population is female, yet there have been dozens of Field Medallists. As a mathematician, I consider both pieces of information important. If you are only able to see one or the other as important, you may wish to review your reasoning.

    3. Re:here we go again... by twistedcubic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why can't you be happy for the woman, AND be happy that a woman has won the medal? Does this cause you headaches or something?

  2. "Good math doesn't know gender" by l2718 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, the math doesn't know gender, but the mathematicians who evaluate each other (say for promotion or for prizes) do know. Yes, the situation today is very different from the past, but biases do exist. For a strongly worded view point on this try Izabella Laba.

  3. Is there a need for all these PC things ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One winner out of five happens to be a female, and all of the sudden the PC themed "Sexual Inequalities" emerged

    And the fact that there were no Africans nor East Asians were among the five, all of the sudden the PC-related "Where are the Africans / Chinese" topic emerged

    For crying out loud, this is about MATH, and I am really sick and tired with people dragging sex / race / whatever into fields of Math and Science --- as these two are more to the BRAINS rather than anything else

    Please, people, can you please leave Math and Science alone ?

    1. Re:Is there a need for all these PC things ? by Calavar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not sure what you're getting at. There have been Chinese and Vietnamese Fields Medalists in the past, but until now there has never been a female Fields Medalist. There has also never been an African Fields Medalist. Both of these are indicators of serious issues. First, sub-Saharan Africa has a total lack of access to higher education (with the exception of South Africa), and second, cultural pressures often dissuade women from pursuing STEM fields in Western nations and prevent them from entering higher education entirely in certain non-Western nations.

      You could dismiss these concerns as activism, but that's terribly tunnel-visioned. Every African and every women who for some reason or another has missed out on the opportunity to study STEM is another mind that could potentially have been another Euler or Gauss but was denied the chance. Unless women are intrinsically less adept at math (which I personally do not believe is the case), we've been missing out on half the world's great mathematicians. Could you imagine how different the earth would be today if we had two Fermats, two Euclids, two Poincares? How much knowledge have we lost for the lack of women in math and science? This isn't about "leaving math and science alone" from activism. This is about untapping all the math and science talent that has been hidden away for hundreds of years.