First woman to win prestigious maths' Fields Medal, Maryam Mirzakhani, dies of breast cancer

Image courtesy: Maryam Mirzakhani /Twitter

New Delhi: Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the reputable Fields Medal for mathematics, has died in the United States.

As per reports, 40-year-old Maryam died of breast cancer which had eventually spread to her bones.

The award was given to her in 2014, for her work on complex geometry and dynamical systems and she was the first Iranian to receive the prestigious award.

She had won two gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad as a teenager and later earned a PhD at Harvard University in 2004.

Her receipt of the Fields Medal three years ago ended a long wait for women in the mathematics community for the prize, first established in 1936.

Nicknamed the "Nobel Prize for Mathematics", the Fields Medal is only awarded every four years to between two and four mathematicians under 40.