Years After the Early Death of a Math Genius, Her Ideas Gain New Life
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Summary
Maryam Mirzakhani transformed the field of hyperbolic geometry as a young mathematics graduate, developing new techniques for studyingshapes that are curved in the shape of saddles.
Mirzakhani was not able to pursue her work on these exotic shapesbefore her death.
Now mathematicians Nalini Anantharaman and Laura Monk havebuilt on her work to prove a long-standing conjecture about hyperbolicsurfaces.
They show that most hyperbolic surfaces have a particularproperty that experts have long suspected was common.
Anantharaman and Monk picked up the thread of Mirzakhani’s researchand hope to unravel more of the mysteries of hyperbolic geometry.
Their paper is a “landmark result,” said one mathematician.
