Vladimir Rokhlin

Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin was a Soviet mathematician, born in Baku on 23 August 1919 and died on 3 December 1984, who made contributions in algebraic topology, geometry, measure theory, probability theory, ergodic theory and entropy theory. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he entered Moscow State University in 1935 with Abraham Plessner as his advisor. He volunteered for the army in 1941 and spent four years as a prisoner of war, hiding his Jewish origins, and after liberation he was held in verification camps until Andrey Kolmogorov and Lev Pontryagin interceded in 1946. He then joined the Steklov Institute as Pontryagin research assistant, was forced out during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign of the 1950s, taught in Arkhangelsk, Ivanovo and Kolomna, and joined Leningrad State University in 1959. His topological work includes Rokhlin theorem of 1952 on the signature of four-manifolds, and he also worked on characteristic classes, homotopy theory and cobordism. His students include Yakov Eliashberg, Mikhail Gromov, Anatoly Vershik and Oleg Viro.