Story highlights Maryam Mirzakhani dies after battle with cancer

The Stanford professor won the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics, in 2014

(CNN) Maryam Mirzakhani, a Stanford University professor who became the only woman to receive the highest honor in mathematics, died Saturday after a long battle with cancer, the school said.

She was 40.

The Iran native thrived in study of curved surfaces such as doughnut shapes and amoebas -- to a degree that other bright minds in the field dared not explore, her colleagues have said.

In 2014, she became the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics and equivalent in reputation to a Nobel Prize.

The International Mathematical Union established the award in 1936 and has presented it to at least two people every four years since 1950. All 52 recipients before Mirazkhani were men.

Read More