Despite a politically-motivated attempt to expel him, Pokrovsky completed his master's degree, graduating from Kharkov University, Ukrainian SSR, USSR in May 1953.
For his Ph.D. work, Pokrovsky developed a type of polynomial and extended Charles L. Dolph's theory of optimal linear arrays.
[2] In 1966, Pokrovsky was invited to join the newly founded Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Chernogolovka.
In 1990, he spent a six-month sabbatical with Heiner Müller-Krumbhaar at the Condensed Matter Division of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Jülich, Germany.
In 1992, Pokrovsky became a professor of physics at Texas A&M University in the United States, while remaining a Senior Scientist at the Landau Institute.