Alexey Maksimovich Fridman (17 February 1940 – 29 October 2010) was a Soviet physicist specializing in astrophysics, physics of gravitating systems and plasma physics. He discovered new types of instabilities in gravitating media, created the theory of planetary rings and predicted the existence of small Uranus satellites that were later discovered. He also developed the hydrodynamic theory of spiral structure in galaxies. Fridman worked at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, INASAN, and was professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and at Moscow State University. Biography Alexey "Alik" Fridman was born in Moscow on February 17, 1940, in a Jewish family, to Maksim Efimovich Fridman (surgeon, MD/Ph.D./Sci.D.; 1903–1990) and Felitsia Yakovlevna Sheinbaum (economist, 1907–1999). The Polyachenko family lived in the same building, and Alik Fridman and Valerij Polyachenko's lifelong friendship (and later scientific collaboration) started before they were five years old. Following a brief arrest and release of Maksim Fridman perhaps on a prelude to "Doctors' plot" in 1951, the family moved to Frunze (now Bishkek), Kyrgyzstan. Fridman spent summers in Moscow staying with the family of his father's sister, Elena Fridman, and her husband, David A. Frank-Kamenetskii. Following the death of Joseph Stalin and the general amnesty, cities with warm climate filled with criminals and the crime rates skyrocketed. Police was failing, and while in high school Fridman and many other young men joined "the neighborhood watch" brigades organized by Komsomol and police. He did not miss a single training session in military sambo, and acquired many knife scars from the street action. He was the only one who remained alive from his team of four by the graduation. After high school graduation (1957), Fridman attempted to enter Moscow Physics and Technology Institute, but was failed on the oral math exam as often happened to Jewish applicants. He spent this year at Kyrgyzstan University in Frunze, then entered the Kazan University (1958) where he did undergraduate research with Prof. A. Petrov. In 1958, at the age of 18, Fridman passed the first exam, mathematics, in the series of Theoretical minimum, with Lev Landau. In 1960, on advice from David A. Frank-Kamenetskii, Fridman transferred to Novosibirsk University, from which he graduated in 1963 with a M. S. in Physics. The academic career of the young scientist went well until in 1968 he signed the "letter of 46" in defense of imprisoned dissidents. However,