Maryam Mirzakhani 1977-2017

Viktor Orbán thinks that Muslim immigrants are a threat to Europe because they are unable “to integrate into Western societies.” He has said that Muslim immigration is “the Trojan horse of terrorism” and has issued a stark warning that Western civilization and “Christian identity” is in danger. Hungary won’t let in Muslim immigrants at all.

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I heard the shocking news on Saturday morning that award-winning mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani had died; I couldn’t believe it. All over the world news agencies reported her death, Stanford University issued a statement.

Professor Maryam Mirzakhani

I never met Mirzakhani but have known of her for a long time. A couple of years ago someone asked me if I knew Jan Vondrák, the “Hungarian” mathematician at Stanford University. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, not too far from Stanford, and this person thought that all Hungarians know each other in the area.

As it turned out, Vondrák is not Hungarian, he is a Czech immigrant (pretty close) and married to Maryam Mirzakhani, who is also a math professor at Stanford.

Maryam Mirzakhani with her husband and daughter

Maryam Mirzakhani was a petite Muslim woman who came to the United States in 1999. In 2014, when she was just 37-year-old, she received the Fields Medal, the highest award for mathematicians, some call it the Nobel-prize of Mathematics. With her husband they raised a daughter together.

What is remarkable about her award is that Maryam was the first and only (!) woman ever to receive the Medal. The first Fields Medal was awarded in 1936, more than 80 years ago. No Hungarian mathematician has ever received it.

Maryam was a theoretician and in an interview she explained her problem solving process: “It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out.” Her students and fellow mathematicians called her “a genius.”

Professor Maryam Mirzakhani, a Muslim immigrant from Iran was 40 years old; she died of breast cancer on July 15, 2017.

György Lázár

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