| Lev Landau | |
|---|---|
 Lev Davidovich Landau (1908-1968)
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| Born |
January 22, 1908 Baku, Azerbaijan, Russian Empire |
| Died |
April 1, 1968 (aged 60) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Residence | Soviet Union |
| Citizenship | Soviet Union |
| Fields | Theoretical Physics |
| Institutions | Baku
State University Kharkiv University Kharkiv Polytechnical Institute Institute for Physical Problems MSU Faculty of Physics |
| Alma mater | Leningrad State
University Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute |
| Doctoral students |
Alexei Alexeyevich
Abrikosov Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov |
| Other notable students | Evgeny Lifshitz |
| Known for | Superfluidity Superconductivity |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Physics (1962) |
Lev Davidovich Landau (Russian language: Ле́в Дави́дович
Ланда́у; born January 22, 1908 – died April 1, 1968) was a
prominent Soviet
physicist who made
fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical
physics. His accomplishments include the co-discovery of the density matrix
method in quantum mechanics, the quantum
mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of second
order phase transitions, the Ginzburg-Landau
theory of superconductivity, the explanation of
Landau damping
in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and
the two-component theory of neutrinos. He received the 1962 Nobel
Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory
of superfluidity that accounts for the properties of liquid helium II at
a temperature below 2.17 K (−270.98 °C).
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Landau was born on January 22, 1908 to a Jewish family in Baku, in what was then the Russian Empire. Recognized very early as a child prodigy in mathematics, Landau was quoted as saying in later life that he scarcely remembered a time when he was not familiar with calculus. Landau graduated at 13 from gymnasium. His parents regarded him too young to attend university, so for a year he attended the Baku Economical Technicum. In 1922, at age 14, he matriculated at Baku State University, studying at two departments simultaneously: the department of Physics and Mathematics, and the department of Chemistry. Subsequently he ceased studying chemistry, but remained interested in the field throughout his life.
In 1924, he moved to the main centre of Soviet physics at the time: the Physics Department of Leningrad State University. In Leningrad, he first made the acquaintance of genuine theoretical physics and dedicated himself fully to its study, graduating in 1927. Landau subsequently enrolled for post-graduate study at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, and at 21, received a doctorate. Landau got his first chance to travel abroad in 1929, on a Soviet government traveling fellowship supplemented by a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship.
After brief stays in Göttingen and Leipzig, he went to Copenhagen to work at Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics. After the visit, Landau always considered himself a pupil of Niels Bohr and Landau's approach to physics was greatly influenced by Bohr. After his stay in Copenhagen he visited Cambridge and Zürich before returning to the Soviet Union. Between 1932 and 1937 he headed the department of theoretical physics at the National Technical University's "Kharkov Polytechnical Institute" (now known as the Kharkiv Mechanics and Machine Building Institute).
During the Great Purge, Landau was investigated within the UPTI Affair in Kharkov, but he managed to leave for Moscow. Still, he was arrested on April 27, 1938 and held in an NKVD prison until his release on April 29, 1939, after his colleague Pyotr Kapitsa, an experimental low-temperature physicist, wrote a letter to Stalin, personally vouching for Landau's behavior.
On January 7, 1962, Landau's car collided with an oncoming truck. He was severely injured and spent two months in a coma. Landau never fully recovered, and never returned fully to scientific work.
In 1965 former students and coworkers of Landau founded the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, located in the town of Chernogolovka near Moscow, and headed for the following three decades by Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov.
Landau died on April 1, 1968, aged 60, from complications of the injuries from the accident. He was buried at Novodevichy cemetery.[1][2]
Apart from his theoretical accomplishments, Landau was the principal founder of a great tradition of theoretical physics in Kharkov, Soviet Union (now Kharkiv, Ukraine), sometimes referred to as the "Landau school". He was the head of the Theoretical Division at the Institute for Physical Problems from 1937 until 1962 when, as a result of a car accident, he suffered injuries from which he was never back to science.[3]His students included Lev Pitaevskii, Alexei Abrikosov, Arkady Levanyuk, Evgeny Lifshitz, Lev Gor'kov, Isaak Khalatnikov, Boris L. Ioffe and Isaak Pomeranchuk.
Landau developed a comprehensive exam called the "Theoretical Minimum" which students were expected to pass before admission to the school. The exam covered all aspects of theoretical physics, and between 1943 and 1961 only 43 candidates passed.
In Kharkov, he and his friend and former student, Evgeny Lifshitz, began writing the Course of Theoretical Physics, ten volumes that together span the whole of the subject and are still widely used as graduate-level physics texts.
The minor planet 2142 Landau discovered in 1972 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh is named in his honor.[4] The lunar crater Landau is named in his honor.
Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, a 0.5, was assigned to Albert Einstein. A rank of 1 was awarded to 'historical giant' Isaac Newton, Satyendra Nath Bose, Eugene Wigner, and the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger. Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted himself to a 2. David Mermin, writing about Landau, referred to the scale, and ranked himself in the fourth division, in the article My Life with Landau: Homage of a 4.5 to a 2.[5][6]
Lev Davidovich Landau (1908-01-22 – 1968-04-01) was a prominent Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.
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