A Mathematician Who Fled to Freedom but Still Stares Down Doubts

On paper, it might come as no surprise that Svetlana Jitomirskaya, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1966, became a mathematician. Everyone in her family — her parents and her older brother — was one. Her mother, Valentina Borok, was particularly well known, as back then she was Ukraine’s only female full professor of mathematics. But her mother also tried to warn her away from the subject.

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