History was made on Wednesday.
Maryam Mirzakhani, 37, became the first woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal, widely acknowledged as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. She is also the first Stanford professor to be awarded the prize in its history, since 1966.
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Mirzakhani is being recognized for her work in the fields of geometry and dynamic systems. which includes an understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces, such as spheres, the surfaces of doughnuts and of hyperbolic objects.
"I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians," Mirzakhani said in a statement. "I am sure there will be many more women winning this kind of award in coming years."
And girls could use this kind of encouragement. Most studies show that women continue to be unrepresented in the science and technology sectors.
The Fields Medal, which officially called the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is also being awarded to three other mathematical theorists: Artur Avila, Manjul Bhargava and Martin Hairer.
The Iranian-born Mirzakhani has won math prizes for decades; twice, she received a gold medal while competing as a teenager at the International Mathematical Olympiad. She has also been recognized twice as one of Popular Science magazine's "10 Brilliant Minds."
While much of Mirzakhani's work is theoretical, some of it could impact studies of how the universe was born -- as well as engineering, material science and cryptography.