Svetlana Y. Jitomirskaya

Winner of the Barry Prize, 2023

Dr. Jitomirskaya was interviewed by Sergiu Klainerman of Princeton University for our series of interviews with 2023 Barry Prize winners. They discuss her career, including experiences of stark and explicit discrimination as a routine part of university life in the Soviet Union, and the importance of freedom, equal rights and open inquiry to education in the United States.

The prize citation for Dr. Jitomirskaya’s Barry Prize reads:

Svetlana Jitomirskaya has done pioneering work in an area of mathematical physics stemming from the quantum mechanics of two-dimensional materials and lying at the fertile interplay of many exciting branches of modern mathematics. In the course of this work, she developed novel methods and new ideas for some of the central problems in the field, transforming the way mathematicians look at these problems and attracting a new generation of young researchers. The Academy honors Dr. Jitomirskaya for her distinguished scientific contributions and intense dedication to preserving the highest standards of academic excellence.

Svetlana Y. Jitomirskaya is a Goldman Distinguished Chair Professor at UC Berkeley. She was born and raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine; both her parents were Holocaust survivors. She obtained Ph.D. at Moscow State University in 1991, and then worked at UC Irvine from 1991 until 2023, rising there through the ranks from a part-time lecturer to distinguished professor. She held the inaugural Hubbard Chair at Georgia Tech in 2022-23. Her research in mathematical physics has been recognized by various prizes, including the APS & AIP Heineman Prize (2019) and the inaugural Ladyzhenskaya Prize (2022). She has also published on matters related to math education. All three of her children and most of her nearly 30 mentees are at various stages of successful academic careers in mathematics.

November 2023

The awarding of the Barry Prize to Dr. Jitomirskaya at our 2023 ceremony at the Library of Congress: