English: Alexander Polyakov has made profound contributions, often years ahead of their time, across a wide range of fields in fundamental physics. His main achievement is the unification of ideas governing different parts of physics by providing a general framework (the conformal field theory, instantons, and gauge/string duality) that establishes connections between apparently unrelated subjects. His other contributions include the prediction of a new state of matter at high temperature — the quark-gluon plasma — and a novel approach to turbulence.