The Mirzakhani Issue

What is a mathematical pool table? What trajectory does the ball take as it bounces off the rails? Is it possible to find pool tables where, given the starting point of the ball, there are inaccessible points? And what do donuts and pretzels have to do with it? Some of these curious questions – actually deep mathematical questions – were answered by mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the Fields Medal. Maryam Mirzakhani was an outstanding mathematician, one of the most remarkable minds of this millennium, and 12 May, 1977 was her date of birth. Upon her death on 15 July, 2017, the grief in the mathematical community was so profound that in 2018, at the first World Conference of Women in Mathematics, it was decided that the 12th of May would become the date to celebrate women in mathematics. In celebrating this anniversary and in collaboration with the Italian Mathematical Union, Comics&Science presents a story that has Maryam as its protagonist, thanks to the surreal pen of Davide La Rosa, the masterful drawings of Silvia Ziche, and the beautiful watercolours of Dario Grillotti. Alongside the story, which takes place in a peculiar place filled with mathematical mysteries, we find, as always, Walter Leoni‘s beloved and intelligent comic strips.