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Maryam Mirzakhani Is the First Woman Fields Medalist
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.
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
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.
Let's celebrate like topologists --- with donuts and mugs of coffee!
Finding God in a Dog
Artur Avila is the first field Medal ever to a latin american.
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.