Maryam Mirzakhani

As a graduate student at Harvard, I had to explain quite a few times that I was allowed to attend a university as a woman in Iran.

My older brother was the person who got me interested in science in general. He used to tell me what he learned in school. My first memory of mathematics is probably the time that he told me about the problem of adding numbers from 1 to 100.

Most problems I work on are related to geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations.

I find discussing mathematics with colleagues of different backgrounds one of the most productive ways of making progress.