[2] His mother, Henrietta Emmanuilovna Levenson, had studied medicine in France (she died in Baku in 1923, believed to have been killed during civil unrest provoked by an epidemic).

His maternal grandfather Emmanuil Levenson was a wealthy businessman (he was also the illegitimate father of Korney Chukovsky, who was thus Henrietta's half-brother).

His students include Viatcheslav Kharlamov, Yakov Eliashberg, Mikhail Gromov, Nikolai V. Ivanov, Anatoly Vershik and Oleg Viro.

His son Vladimir Rokhlin, Jr. is a well-known mathematician and computer scientist at Yale University.

Rokhlin's uncle was Korney Chukovsky, a well-known Russian poet, most famous for his popular children's books.