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Lev Davidovich Landau (; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. He was considered as one of the last scientists who were universally well-versed and made seminal contributions to all branches of physics. He is credited with laying the foundations of twentieth century condensed matter physics, and is also considered arguably the greatest Soviet theoretical physicist.
His accomplishments include the independent co-discovery of the density matrix method English translation reprinted in: in quantum mechanics (alongside John von Neumann), the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of Landau theory, invention of order parameter technique, the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity, the theory of , the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, the two-component theory of , and Landau's equations for S-matrix singularities. (2025). 9789814436564, World Scientific. ISBN 9789814436564 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 helium II at a temperature below ().
After brief stays in Göttingen and Leipzig, he went to Copenhagen on 8 April 1930 to work at the Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics. He stayed there until 3 May of the same year. 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 (mid-1930), where he worked with Paul Dirac, Copenhagen (September to November 1930),During this period Landau visitied Copenhagen three times: 8 April to 3 May 1930, from 20 September to 22 November 1930, and from 25 February to 19 March 1931 (see Landau Lev biography – MacTutor History of Mathematics). and Zürich (December 1930 to January 1931), where he worked with Wolfgang Pauli.Jagdish Mehra (2001) The Golden Age of Theoretical Physics, Boxed Set of 2 Volumes, World Scientific, p. 952. . From Zürich Landau went back to Copenhagen for the third timeSykes, J. B. (2013) Landau: The Physicist and the Man: Recollections of L. D. Landau, Elsevier, p. 81. . and stayed there from 25 February until 19 March 1931 before returning to Leningrad the same year.Haensel, P.; Potekhin, A. Y. and Yakovlev, D. G. (2007) Neutron Stars 1: Equation of State and Structure, Springer Science & Business Media, p. 2. .
Landau developed a famous 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 1934 and 1961 only 43 candidates passed, but those who did later became quite notable theoretical physicists.
In 1932, Landau computed the Chandrasekhar limit;On the Theory of Stars, in Collected Papers of L. D. Landau, ed. and with an introduction by D. ter Haar, New York: Gordon and Breach, 1965; originally published in Phys. Z. Sowjet. 1 (1932), 285. however, he did not apply it to white dwarf stars.
On 27 April 1938, Landau was arrested for the possession of a leaflet which compared Stalinism to Nazism and Italian fascism. Музей-кабинет Петра Леонидовича Капицы (Peter Kapitza Memorial Museum-Study), Академик Капица: Биографический очерк (a biographical sketch of Academician Kapitza). He was held in the NKVD's Lubyanka prison until his release, on 29 April 1939, after Pyotr Kapitsa (an experimental low-temperature physicist and the founder and head of the institute) and Bohr wrote letters to Joseph Stalin.O'Connor, 2014Yakovlev, 2012 Kapitsa personally vouched for Landau's behaviour and threatened to quit the institute if Landau was not released.Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, pub Simon & Schuster, 1995, p. 33. After his release, Landau discovered how to explain Kapitsa's superfluidity using sound waves, or , and a new excitation called a roton.
Landau led a team of mathematicians supporting Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb development. He calculated the dynamics of the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb, including predicting the yield. For this work Landau received the Stalin Prize in 1949 and 1953, and was awarded the title "Hero of Socialist Labour" in 1954.
Landau's students included Lev Pitaevskii, Alexei Abrikosov, Aleksandr Akhiezer, Igor Dzyaloshinskii, Evgeny Lifshitz, Lev Gor'kov, Isaak Khalatnikov, Roald Sagdeev and Isaak Pomeranchuk.
Landau 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)."
Landau is generally described as an atheist,
Throughout his life Landau was known for his sharp humour, as illustrated by the following dialogue with a psychologist, Alexander Luria, who tried to test for possible brain damage while Landau was recovering from the car crash: Kora Drobantseva's memoirs, Chapter 38, "The way we lived"; the episode with Alexander Luria (in the original Russian text, referred to as Лурье) testing Lev Landau on intellectual abilities
In 1965 former students and co-workers of Landau founded the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, located in the town of Chernogolovka near Moscow, and led for the following three decades by Isaak Khalatnikov.
In June 1965, Lev Landau and Evsei Liberman published a letter in the New York Times, stating that as Soviet Jews they opposed U.S. intervention on behalf of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.Yaacov Ro'i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1948–1967, Cambridge University Press 2003, p. 199 However, there are doubts that Landau authored this letter. «Если нужен вор, его и с виселицы снимают»
On 22 January 2019, Google celebrated what would have been Landau's 111th birthday with a Google Doodle.
The Landau-Spitzer Award (American Physical Society), which recognizes outstanding contributions to plasma physics and European-United States collaboration, is named in-part in his honor.
Landau had a lesser known scale to measure the genius of a scientist using diagrams instead. He had four classes of diagrams, with the first being a simple triangle, which included those who were the most original and brilliant, such as Dirac and Einstein. The diagrams were formed by two parallel lines, bottom representing tenacity, while the top measured genius and originality.
Landau and Lifshitz suggested in the third volume of the Course of Theoretical Physics that the then-standard periodic table had a mistake in it, and that lutetium should be regarded as a d-block rather than an f-block element. Their suggestion was fully vindicated by later findings,Eric Scerri (2020). The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, New York, and in 1988 was endorsed by a report of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
Scientific achievements
Landau's accomplishments include the independent co-discovery of the density matrix method in quantum mechanics (alongside John von Neumann), the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of Phase transition, the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity, the theory of Fermi liquids, the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, the two-component theory of neutrinos, the explanation of flame instability (the Darrieus-Landau instability), and Landau's equations for S matrix singularities.
Personal life and views
In 1937, Landau married Kora T. Drobanzeva from Kharkiv.Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Experiment, Theory, Practice: Articles and Addresses, Springer, 1980, , p. 329. Their son Igor (1946–2011) became a theoretical physicist. Lev Landau believed in "free love" rather than monogamy and encouraged his wife and his students to practise "free love". However, his wife was not enthusiastic.
(2019). 9783319753225, Springer. ISBN 9783319753225 although when Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky asked Landau whether he believed in the existence of God, Landau pondered the matter in silence for three minutes before responding, "I think so." In 1957, a lengthy report to the CPSU Central Committee by the KGB recorded Landau's views on the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, Vladimir Lenin and what he termed "red fascism". 19 December 1957* (no number). The Bukovsky Archives. Hendrik Casimir recalls him as a passionate communist, emboldened by his revolutionary ideology. Landau's drive in establishing Soviet science was in part due to his devotion to socialism. In 1935 he published a piece titled “Bourgeoisie and Contemporary Physics” in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia in which he criticized religious superstition and the dominance of capital, which he saw as bourgeois tendencies, citing “unprecedented opportunities for the development of physics in our country, provided by the Party and the government.”
Last years
On 7 January 1962, Landau's car collided with an oncoming truck. He was severely injured and spent two months in a coma. Although Landau recovered in many ways, his scientific creativity was destroyed, and he never returned fully to scientific work. His injuries prevented him from accepting the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics in person. Nobel Presentation speech by Professor I. Waller, member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 28 January 2012.
Death
Landau died on 1 April 1968, aged 60, from complications of the injuries sustained in the car accident six years earlier. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Obelisk at the Novodevichye Cemetery. novodevichye.com (26 October 2008). Retrieved on 28 January 2012.
Fields of contribution
Pedagogy
Legacy
Two celestial objects are named in his honour:
The highest prize in theoretical physics awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences is named in his honour:
Landau's ranking of physicists
Landau kept a list of names of which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity and genius, such as creativity and innate Aptitude, ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Isaac Newton. Albert Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Satyendra Nath Bose, Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger, and others, while members of rank of 5 were deemed "pathologists". Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted to a 2. N. 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".
In popular culture
Works
Landau wrote his first paper On the derivation of Klein–Fock equation, co-authored with Dmitri Ivanenko in 1926, when he was 18 years old. His last paper titled Fundamental problems appeared in 1960 in an edited version of tributes to Wolfgang Pauli. A complete list of Landau's works appeared in 1998 in the Russian journal Physics-Uspekhi. Landau would allow himself to be listed as a co-author of a journal article on two conditions: 1) he brought up the idea of the work, partly or entirely, and 2) he performed at least some calculations presented in the article. Consequently, he removed his name from numerous publications of his students where his contribution was less significant.
Course of Theoretical Physics
(1975). 9780750627689, Butterworth–Heinemann. ISBN 9780750627689
(1977). 9780080209401, Pergamon Press. ISBN 9780080209401 — 2nd ed. (1965) at archive.org
(1982). 9780750633710, Butterworth–Heinemann. ISBN 9780750633710
(1980). 9780750633727, Butterworth–Heinemann. ISBN 9780750633727
(1987). 9780080339337, Butterworth–Heinemann. ISBN 9780080339337
(1986). 9780750626330, Butterworth–Heinemann. ISBN 9780750626330
(1984). 9780750626347, Butterworth–Heinemann. ISBN 9780750626347
(1980). 9780750626361, Butterworth–Heinemann. ISBN 9780750626361
(1981). 9780750626354, Pergamon Press. ISBN 9780750626354
Other
(1965). 9780080105864, ONTI, Kharkiv. ISBN 9780080105864
See also
Further reading
(2025). 9789814436564, World Scientific. ISBN 9789814436564
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Lev Davidovich Landau and his Impact on Contemporary Theoretical Physics, Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2009, .
External links
Categories: Lev Landau, 1908 Births, 1968 Deaths, Soviet Nobel Laureates, Azerbaijani Jews, Scientists From Baku, Burials At Novodevichy Cemetery, Fluid Dynamicists, Foreign Associates Of The National Academy Of Sciences, Foreign Members Of The Royal Society, Full Members Of The Ussr Academy Of Sciences, Nobel Laureates In Physics, Heroes Of Socialist Labour, Recipients Of The Stalin Prize, Recipients Of The Lenin Prize, Recipients Of The Order Of The Badge Of Honour, Recipients Of The Order Of Lenin, Recipients Of The Order Of The Red Banner Of Labour, Winners Of The Max Planck Medal, Jewish Atheists, Members Of The German National Academy Of Sciences Leopoldina, Academic Staff Of Moscow State University, Academic Staff Of The Moscow Institute Of Physics And Technology, People From Baku Governorate, Saint Petersburg State University Alumni, Soviet Atheists, Soviet Inventors, Soviet Jewish Physicists, Theoretical Physicists, Academic Staff Of The National University Of Kharkiv, Superfluidity, People Involved With The Periodic Table, Russian Scientists, Kharkiv Institute Of Physics And Technology People
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