Mathematician awarded Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement

Svetlana Jitomirskaya, UCI adjunct professor of mathematics, has received a 2023 Barry Prize from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters in recognition of intellectual excellence and courage. The prize was awarded recently by academy President Donald W. Landry of Columbia University and Chairman of the Board Sanjeev R. Kulkarni of Princeton University in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement is the academy’s premier award to promote excellence in scholarship. This annual prize, open to scholars across diverse fields and disciplines, honors those whose work has “made outstanding contributions to humanity’s knowledge, appreciation and cultivation of the good, the true and the beautiful,” according to the academy. Recipients are nominated by academy members and appointed by the board of directors. Winners of the Barry Prize receive $50,000 and become members of the academy. In their award citation, academy officials said: “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 to 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.” The American Academy of Sciences and Letters promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences and learned professions. It supports learning by encouraging the exchange of ideas within academia and in society at large; by sponsoring occasions for scholarly interaction; and by providing platforms for the presentation and dissemination of scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. Jitomirskaya was one of 10 Barry Prize recipients this year and the only one representing a public university. While continuing as an adjunct professor at UCI, Jitomirskaya began serving this fall as the Richard and Rhonda Goldman Distinguished Chair and Professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley.