Ukraine's Maryna Viazovska becomes the only second woman to be awarded the prestigious Fields medal. Including Viazovska, a total of four mathematicians shared the prestigious Fields medals on Tuesday (July 5) the International Mathematical Union jury said.

Ukraine's Maryna Viazovska becomes the only second woman to be awarded the prestigious Fields medal. Including Viazovska, a total of four mathematicians shared the prestigious Fields medals on Tuesday (July 5) the International Mathematical Union jury said. The Fields medal is dubbed the Nobel prize for mathematics. Apart from Viazovska, the other medal winners are France's Hugo Duminil-Copin, US-based June Huh and Britain's James Maynard. The award-giving ceremony was held in Finland's Helsinki as the initially chosen venue, Saint Petersburg, was replaced after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Who is Maryna Viazovska? Viazovska was born in 1984 in Ukraine, then it was still a part of the Soviet Union. In the history of over 80 years, Viazovska is only the second woman to win the prize for proving the best way to pack spheres in eight dimensions to take up the least space. It was a centuries-old mathematical problem. She proved the densest packing of identical spheres in eight dimensions. The "sphere packing problem" dates back to the 16th century when the question of how cannonballs should be stacked to achieve the densest possible solution was poised. She said her life "changed forever" when Russia invaded her home country. Her parents and sisters were living in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, when the war began. While receiving the prize, she said at a ceremony in Helsinki: "I could not think of anything else, including mathematics." As reported by AFP, she has been a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland since 2017. Maryam Mirzakhani was the first woman to win the prize in 2014. She was an Iranian-born mathematician who died three years later in 2017 after a battle with cancer. WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.

Maryna Viazovska: Ukrainian becomes second woman to win Fields math medal

Maryam Mirzakhani, the first and only woman to receive the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics, died on Saturday at age 40 after a battle with cancer, said officials at Stanford University, the California school where she taught.

The death of the Tehran-born Mirzakhani, who specialised in theoretical mathematics, came three years after she received the Fields Medal at an event in Seoul.

The prize is handed out every four years to honour mathematicians under 40 who make major contributions. Mirzakhani was 37 when in 2014 she became the first woman to win the prize, which was established in 1936 and is equivalent to the Nobel Prize for mathematics.

The mathematician received the medal for her work in understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces, Stanford officials said in 2014.

Mirzakhani at the time said she had dreamed of becoming a writer when she was young, before taking an interest in mathematical problems.

&quot;It is fun; it&#39;s like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case,&quot; she said in 2014.

Growing up in Iran, she attended an all-girls high school and gained recognition as a teenager in the 1994 and 1995 competitions of the International Mathematical Olympiad.

She later graduated from Sharif University in Tehran and then headed to Harvard University in Massachusetts, to obtain her doctorate in mathematics.

Mirzakhani joined the faculty at Stanford in the San Francisco Bay area in 2008.

In recent years, she worked with Alex Eskin at the University of Chicago to investigate the trajectory of a billiard ball as it bounces around a polygonal table. The complexities in the ball&#39;s movement have long bedeviled physicists.

Mirzakhani, while solving mathematical problems, often drew on large sheets of paper while scribbling formulas on the edges, an approach that her young daughter believed to be a form of painting, according to Stanford.

Mirzakhani is survived by her husband, Jan Vondr&aacute;k, and a daughter, Anahita. A Stanford spokesman said he did not have any information on where Mirzakhani died.

Maryam Mirzakhani died after a battle with cancer

Maryam Mirzakhani, the first and only woman to receive the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics, died on Saturday at age 40 after a battle with cancer, said officials at Stanford University, the California school where she taught. The death of the Tehran-born Mirzakhani, who specialised in theoretical mathematics, came three years after she received the Fields Medal at an event in Seoul. The prize is handed out every four years to honour mathematicians under 40 who make major contributions. Mirzakhani was 37 when in 2014 she became the first woman to win the prize, which was established in 1936 and is equivalent to the Nobel Prize for mathematics. The mathematician received the medal for her work in understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces, Stanford officials said in 2014. Mirzakhani at the time said she had dreamed of becoming a writer when she was young, before taking an interest in mathematical problems. "It is fun; it's like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case," she said in 2014. Growing up in Iran, she attended an all-girls high school and gained recognition as a teenager in the 1994 and 1995 competitions of the International Mathematical Olympiad. She later graduated from Sharif University in Tehran and then headed to Harvard University in Massachusetts, to obtain her doctorate in mathematics. Mirzakhani joined the faculty at Stanford in the San Francisco Bay area in 2008. In recent years, she worked with Alex Eskin at the University of Chicago to investigate the trajectory of a billiard ball as it bounces around a polygonal table. The complexities in the ball's movement have long bedeviled physicists. Mirzakhani, while solving mathematical problems, often drew on large sheets of paper while scribbling formulas on the edges, an approach that her young daughter believed to be a form of painting, according to Stanford. Mirzakhani is survived by her husband, Jan Vondrák, and a daughter, Anahita. A Stanford spokesman said he did not have any information on where Mirzakhani died.

Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win Mathematics' Fields Medal, dies at 40

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Maryna Viazovska: Ukrainian becomes second woman to win Fields math medal

Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win Mathematics' Fields Medal, dies at 40