Undergraduate studies

Friedmann was lucky: in 1906, the year he entered the University, Professor Vladimir Andreyevich Steklov (1864–1926) was transferred there from Kharkov. He was a Corresponding Member and later a Full Member of the Academy of Sciences, and in the Soviet period its Vice-President: one of the organizers of science in the USSR, a brilliant mathematician who continued the best traditions of the St. Petersburg mathematical school, glorified by the names of P. L. Chebyshev, A. A. Markov, A. N. Korkin, A. M. Lyapunov and many others.

Vladimir Steklov played an extremely important role in Alexander Friedmann's life. He was not only an outstanding mathematician, but also had an unusually bright personality. Nature had endowed him with excellent genetics. His uncle on his mother's side was Nikolai Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov, the famous Russian literary critic. His father, Andrei Ivanovich Steklov, a highly educated person, taught history and Hebrew at the Nizhni Novgorod Theological Seminary. Vladimir Steklov had unquestionable literary and musical talents – he could have been a successful opera singer. Steklov has bequeathed to us not only classical works in mathematics and mathematical physics, but also works of some literary merit. These include his book To America and Back (Leningrad, 1925), based on his impressions of his trip to the United States, as well as his books about Lomonosov and Galileo. Yet his vast literary legacy is still waiting to be published and commented upon. For almost two decades Vladimir Steklov kept a diary, and the archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences hold colorful notebooks filled with his daily jottings.