Abstract
The genre of the journal Uspekhi Matematicheskikh Nauk1 suggests that we should mainly review the mathematical results of Vladimir Uspensky. However, the whole of his personality and the scope of his activities oblige us to take a broader view. He was an outstanding mathematician, but this also manifested itself in diverse areas where he was active and in his results even outside mathematics. We will also discuss these areas in our survey. During Uspensky’s lifetime no tribute paper dedicated to him appeared in this journal, and this makes it particularly important to (finally) publish a biography of him as a scholar in Uspekhi Matematicheskikh Nauk