Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable

experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC

makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Hello and welcome to more or less with me Charlotte McDonald.

Tributes have been paid to the world-renowned Iranian mathematician

Marion Mizakani who has died of cancer in the United States. The 40-year-old was

the first woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize

for mathematics.

In today's programme we're celebrating Marian Meersikarni, one of the greatest mathematicians

of the past century century who died recently. She was

known for her groundbreaking work on hyperbolic shapes and reemans surfaces, as

well as simple games we might play at home.

So the general problem is trying to understand the behavior of a ball in a billier table.

That's Meza Khani herself giving a lecture at Harvard University in the US.

Born and raised in Tehran as a teenager, she competed in the International Mathematical

Olympiad. She won consecutive gold medals, the first female Iranian to take home a top prize

and the first Iranian ever to receive a perfect score.

But as a child in revolutionary Iran she'd not been particularly good at maths.

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