The UNM Department of Mathematics and Statistics will be holding a screening of the film “Secrets of the Surface: The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani” in honor of International Women in Mathematics day on May 12, 2023. We invite you all to join us for the movie at 5 pm in the SMLC auditorium following the department's graduation ceremony and reception earlier that day.

The film examines the life and mathematical work of Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician and a professor at Stanford University. In 2014, prior to her untimely death at the age of 40, she became both the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, often equated in stature with the Nobel Prize, for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.  May 12th is Maryam Mirzakhani's birthday and that is how the date was chosen.

Here is a tribute to Maryam Mirzhakani published in the November 2018 issue of the Notices of the AMS.