Speaker: Javier Aramayona, Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (ICMAT-CSIC)
Date and time: 12 May 2022, 19:00
Venue: Residencia de Estudiantes (c/Pinar 21, Madrid)
Introduced by: David Martín de Diego, Scientific Director of the Mathematical Culture Unit at ICMAT
Abstract: In 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani (Iran, 1977–2017) became the first woman – and the only one to date – to receive the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics. This year marks the fifth anniversary of her passing in 2017. Her birthday, 12 May, has been established as the International Day of Women in Mathematics in her honour. This lecture will briefly describe Mirzakhani’s research, as well as outline the path she followed to become one of the most influential mathematicians of her generation.
About the speaker
Javier Aramayona is a Tenured Scientist at the CSIC and a member of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (ICMAT). His research focuses on spaces of surfaces and their symmetries, which is essentially the same field as Mirzakhani’s; in fact, he was fortunate enough to meet her during a thematic research semester at the MSRI Institute (Berkeley, USA) in 2007.
Aramayona earned his PhD in mathematics from the University of Southampton (United Kingdom) in 2005. He held postdoctoral positions in the UK, France, and the USA, after which he was a permanent lecturer at the universities of Galway (Ireland) and Toulouse (France). In 2015, he returned to Spain with a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship, which he held until joining the CSIC in 2020.