Fields Medalists announced early - First female winner
15 replies, posted
[quote]An Iranian-born mathematician has become the first ever female winner of the celebrated Fields Medal.
In a landmark hailed as "long overdue", Prof Maryam Mirzakhani was recognised for her work on complex geometry.
Four of the medals will be presented in Seoul at the International Congress of Mathematicians, held every four years.
Also among the winners was Prof Martin Hairer from the University of Warwick, UK, whose work on randomness could prove useful for climate modelling.[/quote]
[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28739373[/url]
For those who don't know, the Fields Medal is considered to be essentially the "Nobel prize of mathematics."
Here's the first thread, for you people that may be looking.
The article talks a lot more about it being a female winner than the actual math. That's fine, but does someone have a link that explains her work a little more?
[QUOTE=Falubii;45677237]The article talks a lot more about it being a female winner than the actual math. That's fine, but does someone have a link that explains her work a little more?[/QUOTE]
I think this does a better job:
[url]http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-explorer-of-abstract-surfaces/[/url]
The OP article was just the first I could find that wasn't the one-paragraph announcement. :v:
I kinda feel bad for the other winners. Mirzakhani is getting so much more media attention. This is probably the crowning achievement of their careers.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;45677715]I think this does a better job:
[url]http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-explorer-of-abstract-surfaces/[/url]
The OP article was just the first I could find that wasn't the one-paragraph announcement. :v:
I kinda feel bad for the other winners. Mirzakhani is getting so much more media attention. This is probably the crowning achievement of their careers.[/QUOTE]
If I ever won a Nobel prize I wouldn't really care if the public knew. Not like you'd get recognized on the street or anything.
[QUOTE=Falubii;45678066]If I ever won a Nobel prize I wouldn't really care if the public knew. Not like you'd get recognized on the street or anything.[/QUOTE]
yeah, they're probably more excited about the easier time getting grants, pay raises, prize money, etc.
(and maybe the recognition of their brilliant work I guess)
But if they were really hardcore they'd reject all the prizes because reasons
[QUOTE=Falubii;45678096]But if they were really hardcore they'd reject all the prizes because reasons[/QUOTE]
and grow a great big beard and move to a shack in the woods in russia and then everyone was grisha perelman
[QUOTE=Falubii;45678096]But if they were really hardcore they'd reject all the prizes because reasons[/QUOTE]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman[/url]
[QUOTE=Falubii;45677237]The article talks a lot more about it being a female winner than the actual math. That's fine, but does someone have a link that explains her work a little more?[/QUOTE]
Here's another description of their researches from Terry Tao:
[url]http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/avila-bhargava-hairer-mirzakhani/[/url]
It's a bit disheartening that threads against feminism always get hundreds of winners and usually a 20 page argument, but this thread hasn't received all that much attention. It's really awesome to hear, anyway! I hope some people look at this story and feel inspired.
[QUOTE=NiandraLades;45678676]It's a bit disheartening that threads against feminism always get hundreds of winners and usually a 20 page argument, but this thread hasn't received all that much attention. It's really awesome to hear, anyway! I hope some people look at this story and feel inspired.[/QUOTE]
Well math is hard and Robin Williams died.
I was wondering why you had deleted that other thread :v:
[QUOTE=NiandraLades;45678676]It's a bit disheartening that threads against feminism always get hundreds of winners and usually a 20 page argument, but this thread hasn't received all that much attention. It's really awesome to hear, anyway! I hope some people look at this story and feel inspired.[/QUOTE]
Whenever I read a thread/article like this one I end up on Wikipedia and forget to post.
[quote]Prof Hairer's award is specifically for his contribution to a particular type of equation, known as a partial differential equation or PDE. His theory allows mathematicians to predict how physical processes will develop when they contain elements of randomness.[/quote]
Can someone make sense of this? How can it be random if it's predicted, this is not what I was taught in Jurassic Park
[QUOTE=kaskade700;45679428]Whenever I read a thread/article like this one I end up on Wikipedia and forget to post.
Can someone make sense of this? How can it be random if it's predicted, this is not what I was taught in Jurassic Park[/QUOTE]
You can predict behavior that's generic to all systems even when they have random elements. For instance, if we're looking at infinite random walks in one dimension (flip an ideal coin, go left on the number line from 0 if it's heads and right if it's tails, do this forever), we can ask questions like, "How many times can we expect this random walk to cross 0?" That's a prediction of behavior.
This guy works with PDEs which are a little different, so here's possibly a better example. I had a quantum professor who did research with random predator-prey models. Here's a simulation you can run and tweak:
[url]http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/PredatorPreyEcosystemARealTimeAgentBasedSimulation/[/url]
He showed us simulations like that. There notable large scale behavior ("waves" forming of groups of rabbits and foxes), and some of it is predicatable but there are random elements as well (e.g. how likely it is that a fox eats a rabbit or a rabbit reproduces). You can look at what the likely behavior is when the parameters are set certain ways.
Congratulations to her and as well to the other winners who may also feel a little overshadowed but it must still be a fantastic feeling to be recognized for countless hours of hard work.
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