Anatolii Mikhailovich Stepin

Abstract

Anatolii Mikhailovich Stepin, a prominent scientist and educator, expert in dynamical systems and ergodic theory, passed away on 7 November 2020. His death was a bitter loss for his family, students, colleagues, and mathematicians at large. He was born in Moscow on 20 July 1940. During the war he was evacuated to Chelyabinsk together with his mother, while his father, a chemical engineer, worked at a defense factory. After the war their family returned to Moscow. Anatolii graduated from Moscow School no. 434 with a gold medal and, intending to follow in his father’s footsteps, enrolled at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, the Division of Thermal Physics. At that time M. I. Vishik, who was well known for his work on partial differential equations, read mathematics courses at the Institute. The talented student became interested in these lectures, and after his 3rd year at Power Engineering Institute, he decided to transfer to the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University. After solving the tricky problem of being transferred to another university, Stepin became a student at the Department of Theory of Functions and Functional Analysis, and chose F.A. Berezin to be his scientific advisor. In addition to Berezin’s research seminar, Stepin was also