On her birthday, Women in Mathematics Day: Meet the ‘slow thinker’ who made history by winning the Fields Medal

Maryam Mirzakhani’s journey from a teenage mathematics Olympiad champion in Iran to the first woman and first Iranian to win the Fields Medal offers a powerful lesson in patience and perseverance. Rather than treating mathematics as a race, she embraced a slower, exploratory approach to solving complex problems. Her groundbreaking research in geometry and dynamical systems transformed modern mathematics. For students, her life shows that taking time to think deeply can lead to extraordinary discoveries.