The article consists of the memories of the brilliant linguist of the Mikhail Viktorovich Panov (1920–2001). The personal aspect is more important here; hence there is a pronoun “my” in the name of the article. In conversations, M.V. Panov avoided some topics that usually concerned his not always simple relations with other people. Sometimes his assessments, in my opinion, were excessively categorical, but he did not allow their questioning. The recollections given here may be useful to future biographers of M. V. Panov. Now there are works in which they are trying to comprehend the place of M. V. Panov in the philological space of the second half of the 20th century.

These notes also cannot claim to be a complete and comprehensive analysis of the scientific views of M. V. Panov. His phonological views are presented somewhat more thoroughly; in other cases, the works are mentioned briefly, and only their general characteristics are given. I hope that the reader will be interested in the personality of M. V. Panov, and familiarity with his work will be a natural continuation of the reading of this article.

Scientists such as M. V. Panov belong to eternity, so we still have time to study his scientific heritage.