[1][2] Beketov, the Meritorious Professor of Saint Petersburg University (which he was the head of in 1876-1883) was also a famous pedagogue and lecturer; among his best-known students were Andrey Krasnov, Vladimir Vernadsky, Kliment Timiryazev and Ivan Shmalhausen.

Together with Khristofor Gobi he co-founded Scripta Botanica (Ботанические записки), the first ever Russian magazine on botany.

In 1892-1897 he edited the botany section of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary.

He translated into Russian several seminal works by Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle, August Grisebach, Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Thomas Henry Huxley.

[5] The renowned Silver Age poet Alexander Blok was his grandson.