07/03/2025
Congrats, Hannah!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Gp3rFo3Ye/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Hannah Cairo, a 17-year-old mathematical prodigy from the Bahamas, stunned the mathematical world by refuting the long-standing Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture that had challenged experts for four decades. "After months of trying to prove the result, I managed to understand why it was so difficult. I realized that if I used that information correctly, I might be able to refute the claim," Cairo explains about her breakthrough moment.
While taking classes at UC Berkeley as a high school student, she became obsessed with this problem in harmonic analysis after her professor, Ruixiang Zhang, included it as an optional homework challenge. Despite her youth, she approached the problem with remarkable persistence, eventually constructing a counterexample using fractals. "It took me a while to convince Ruixiang Zhang that my proposal was actually correct," she recalls, highlighting the initial skepticism her revolutionary approach encountered.
Cairo's passion for mathematics began early in life. "I always wanted to be a mathematician, but I didn't really know what it meant until I learned abstract algebra from books," she shares. "When I was 13 or 14, I wrote a paper on number theory, but it dealt with a problem that nobody cared about," she recalls with a laugh. Ultimately, she found her calling in harmonic analysis, where "everything is made up of waves. You can build anything with them, if you use the right number of waves."
After presenting her findings at the prestigious International Congress on Harmonic Analysis in Spain, Cairo will begin her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland this fall under Zhang's supervision. "He helped me so much, and I'm really grateful. Beyond his class, which I loved, he spent countless hours tutoring me," she says of her mentor. Beyond her mathematical brilliance, Cairo is deeply committed to teaching, stating that her vocation is "to help other people, to make them happy" through the beauty and challenge of mathematics.
To read more about Hannah and her new discovery in El Pais, visit https://bit.ly/3I8nTUU
To introduce kids to more trailblazing women mathematicians, we highly recommend the picture books "Nothing Stopped Sophie" (https://www.amightygirl.com/nothing-stopped-sophie), "A Computer Called Katherine" (https://www.amightygirl.com/a-computer-called-katherine), "The Girl With A Mind For Math" (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-girl-with-a-mind-for-math), "Maryam’s Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani" (https://www.amightygirl.com/maryam-s-magic), all for ages 5 to 9
For older kids, there's a stunning introduction to seven pioneering women in math, "Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math" for ages 9 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/grasping-mysteries
For children's books about math-loving Mighty Girls, visit our blog post "12 Picture Books About Mighty Girls Who Love Math," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=20118
And for our favorite math toys and games to encourage girls' love of math at every age, visit our blog post "Add It Up! Top 35 Math Toys for Mighty Girls" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12180
