Professor Vadim I. Utkin, long recognized for his powerful sliding mode control approach, which he founded in the early 1960s, passed away on September 18, 2022. The authors were close to Professor Utkin for many decades and have had the opportunity to observe his pioneering research resulted in many contributions to modern control theory. The present paper is a tribute to Professor Utkin, in which the authors recall the main milestones of his scientific path.