Skip to main content

Brilliant mathematician Mirzakhani dies



Andromeda about to be devoured by Cetus

               
Most of Tehran’s newspapers put a remarkable photo on their front page last Sunday. It showed an Iranian woman with short hair, her head uncovered. Officials allowed editors to ignore Iran’s strict dress code for female pictures, to mark the death of the mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani. Although she left Iran for the US in 1999, Mirzakhani, who was 40, remained a heroine for many in her home country, including President Hassan Rouhani who released a condolence message about her “unique brilliance” and her contribution to the scientific progress of Iranian women. https://www.ft.com/content/dc9b7bf8-6d67-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0


Stanford mathematics Professor Maryam Mirzakhani (b. 3 May, 1977), the first and to-date only female winner of the Fields Medal since its inception in 1936, died Friday, July 14. She had been battling breast cancer since 2013; the disease spread to her liver and bones in 2016. Mirzakhani was 40 years old. She died at Stanford Hospital.




Presented here is the noon chart for Mirzakhani. Notice the powerful T-square involving Sun-Mercury-Saturn-Moon-Uranus. Mercury-Uranus is the aspect of an intellectually gifted person.. Mercury-Saturn aspects indicate intellectual discipline, a serious outlook, good powers of concentration, and a knack for logical reasoning. With Saturn’s rulership over form and structure, this combination gives both brilliance and discipline in mathematics in general and geometry in particular. So it is not surprising that Mirzakhani’s work focused on  topics in algebraic geometry. She specialised in the geometry and dynamics of complex curved surfaces — a theoretical field that reads like an obscure foreign language to non-mathematicians.

Mirzakhani was born close to a Full Moon that formed a T-square with Saturn-Uranus. Although her time of birth is not known, it is quite likely that both the Sun and Moon were seriously afflicted. In traditional astrology, this is one of the most important factors that indicate a short life. Her radix Sun [12ta47] is conjunct the star Almach [13ta54] and Menkar[13ta59]  while Mercury [8ta30] aligns with Schedir [7ta27].


Alpha (α) Cassiopeia, Schedir, is star on the left breast of the  Queen while Almach is the foot of the princess Andromeda about to be devoured by Menkar in the jaw of the sea-monster Cetus (see image). Symbolically,  Cetus refers to all kinds of troubles including illnesses that can suddenly erupt from the unconscious. Recall that Mirzakhani suffered from breast cancer (Schedir)! The cancer was diagnosed in 2013 when Saturn transited opposite her Sun-Mercury and over Moon-Uranus. And since March 2017, Saturn has been in an upper quincunx (often called the ‘death quincuncx’ because of its 8th house connection)  to her Sun-Mercury.



In a video to mark her Fields Medal award, Mirzakhani gave an example of the sort of problem on which she worked: calculating the trajectory of billiard balls on pool tables as their geometry is deformed into increasingly complex shapes. In astrology we link Saturn with rules as well as with shapes and boundaries. When Uranus acts on Saturn (Mirzakhani has Saturn square Uranus), those boundaries can no longer be rigid. At best they become flexible and at worst they simply shatter.  

Comments