On paper, it might come as no surprise that Svetlana Jitomirskaya, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1966, became a mathematician. Everyone in her family was one, and her mother was Ukraine’s only female full professor of mathematics. Jitomirskaya is now an award-winning mathematician, a distinguished professor at the University of California, Irvine, and was recently named the Elaine M. Hubbard Chair in the School of Mathematics. In this Q-and-A with Quanta Magazine, Jitomirskaya talks about her research, her experiences as a young Jewish woman in the former Soviet Union, and her hopes for math education.