Appendix: My Recollections About Oleg Izhboldin

Abstract

I knew Oleg since he was a sixth-grade student. At that time I was on the jury of the Leningrad Mathematical Olympiad. Oleg won the first prize that year as he did each year that he competed. Upon entering the university, after some hesitation, Oleg decided to study algebra (if I am not mistaken he was also invited to study mathematical analysis). He began to work in an area that was very fashionable at that time: algebraic K-theory of fields. When Oleg asked me to suggest a topic for his annual paper, after some reservations, I gave him a problem connected with objects over fields of finite characteristic. Historically, this particular case has always developed more rapidly than the general theory and has served as a quite a good testing range for many conjectures in algebra. Soon, Oleg mastered a rather extensive amount of the theory. His annual paper could easily have served as his Master’s dissertation. His work investigated the cohomologies of function fields over fields of finite characteristic and contained some original ideas; it was later published. My reservations about giving him this particular problem for his annual paper were due mostly to the fact that Oleg might easily find himself trapped in a relatively narrow area of study within fields of finite characteristic.