Lev Landau

Lev Davidovich Landau

Born: 22 Jan 1908 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Russian Empire
Died: 1 April 1968 in Moscow, USSR

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Lev Landau studied physics and chemistry at Baku University and then went in 1924 to the Leningrad State University, graduating in 1927. He continued research at the Leningrad Physico- Technical Institute.

In 1929 Landau travelled to Göttingen, Leipzig and Copenhagen where he worked in Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics. From that time he considered himself a pupil of Bohr's whose influence was to dictate the direction of Landau's work.

In 1932 Landau become the head of the Theory Division of the Ukrainian Technical Institute in Kharkov. In addition, in 1935, he was made head Physics at the Kharkov Gorky State University. Landau soon made his School in Kharkov the centre of theoretical physics in the USSR.

In 1937 Landau went to Moscow to become Head of the Theory Division of the Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences.

Landau worked on low-temperature physics, atomic and nuclear physics and plasma physics. The work he did on the theory to explain why liquid helium was super-fluid earned him the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physics.

In 1962, Landau was involved in a car accident after which he was unconscious for six weeks. Several times doctors declared him clinically dead. Remarkably Landau regained consciousness and although in most ways he returned to normal, he could never again perform creative work. He died six years later having never completely recovered.

References:

  1. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2. D ter Haar, Men of Physics : L D Landau (Oxford, 1969).
  3. A. Dorozynski, The Man They Wouldn't Let Die (1966).
  4. V L Ginzburg, Landau's attitude towards physics and physicists, Physics today 42 (5) (1989), 54-61.
  5. I M Khalatnikov, Landau : the physicist and the man: recollections of L.D. Landau (Oxford, 1989).
  6. A Livanova, Landau : a great physicist and teacher (Oxford, 1980).
  7. A I Akhiezer, Recollections of Lev Davidivich Landau, Physics today 47 (6) (1994),35-42.
  8. I M Khalatnikov, Reminiscences of Landau, Physics today 42 (5) (1989),34-41. 
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