Maryam Mirzakhani/Corbis/Getty Images(STANFORD, Calif.) — Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to receive the Fields Medal for mathematics, has died, according to the BBC.
The 40-year-old died of breast cancer, which had spread to her bones.
The Fields Medal, nicknamed the “Nobel Prize for Mathematics” is awarded every four years to a handful of mathematicians under age 40. Mirzakhani received the medal in 2014 for her work on complex geometry and dynamical systems.
Born in 1977, Mirzakhani was raised in post-revolutionary Iran and won two gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad as a teenager, according to the BBC.
She earned her doctorate at Harvard University and taught at Stanford University.
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