Iranian woman wins maths' top prize - the Fields medal
A woman has won the maths world's "Nobel prize" for the first time. Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University, California, will receive the Fields medal tomorrow at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul, South Korea.
The medal is awarded once every four years to at most four recipients, who must be aged under 40 at the start of that year. All the previous 52 Fields medallists, dating back to 1936, have been male.
Mirzakhani, who is Iranian, studies the geometry of moduli space, a complex geometric and algebraic entity that might be described as a universe in which every point is itself a universe. Mirzakhani described the number of ways a beam of light can travel a closed loop in a two-dimensional universe. To answer the question, it turns out, you cannot just stay in your "home" universe – you have to understand how to navigate the entire multiverse. Mirzakhani has shown mathematicians new ways to navigate these spaces.
"Speaking as a woman myself, it is a wonderful thing to see her win," Daubechies adds. "It will lay to rest the often-quoted fact that a woman has never won." In future, she says, the idea of a woman winning the top maths award will no longer seem exceptional.
And...
Activists use Wikibomb to give greater recognition of female scientists on WikipediaThe organisers of Australia's first Wikibomb to give greater recognition to the work of female scientists say there is a gender imbalance in the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and the work of women in the industry is going unrecognised.
To counter this a group of online activists today bombarded the site with new entries about Australian women scientists, past and present.
Emma Johnston is a University of New South Wales Professor and a marine ecologist with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science.
"We've got 144 women joining us for the day, and men, who are writing Wikipedia pages about women in science so we're going to have at least 144 excellent entries," she said.
She says the Wikibomb initiative is important for all women.
"If your role models aren't there, it's really difficult to envisage yourself in that role and it's hard to imagine that you might become a scientist," she said.
Dr Marguerite Evans-Galea from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute is also taking part.
"I've actually really gotten very excited about the Wikibomb and I really wanted to focus on women across the spectrum," she said.
Dr Evans-Galea has made four entries.
"One researcher I've selected is Associate Professor Amanda Fosang. Mandy is one of our leading cartilage researchers," she said.
"She has a lot of accolades that I'm hoping to highlight on her page and I encourage everyone to read it, but when I first approached Mandy she was like, 'oh, I don't think that's necessary', and I think that's a classic female response. We don't promote ourselves."
Those involved say they want the online world to better reflect the reality.
"When you do a Google search for famous scientists, you come up with all these pictures of old white men in glasses with lab coats and holding beakers of fuzzy green liquid that look nothing like any experiment that I've ever done," said Dr Krystal Evans, CEO of the BioMelbourne Network.
"And so the Australian Academy of Science initiative wants to correct that by profiling women who've made outstanding contributions."
She says it is important that women's work be reflected where most people are sourcing information about science.
"If you went on Wikipedia and you could only find male scientists, then that's the impression that young children in schools would get, that scientists are all men, but this way we're providing a diversity," she said.
Topic: Chicks don't do science, and are crap at maths.