Lev Landau
Biography
Lev Davidovic Landau was born in Baku on January 22, 1908, as the
son of an engineer and a physician.
After graduating from the Physical Department of Leningrad University
at the age of 19, he began his scientific career at the Leningrad Physico-Technical
Institute. The years 1929 - 1931 he spent abroad, partly as a Rockefeller
Foundation Fellow, working in Germany, Switzerland, England and, especially,
in Copenhagen under Niels Bohr.
During 1932 - 1937 he was head of the Theoretical Department of
the Ukrainian Physico-Technical Institute at Kharkov, and since
1937 he has been the head of the Theoretical Department of the
Institute for Physical Problems of the Academy of Sciences of the
U.S.S.R. in Moscow. Simultaneously he taught constantly as a
professor of theoretical physics in the Kharkov and Moscow State
Universities.
Landau's work covers all branches of theoretical physics, ranging
from fluid mechanics to quantum field theory. A large portion of
his papers refers to the theory of the condensed state. They
started in 1936 with a formulation of a general thermodynamical
theory of the phase transitions of the second order. After P.L.
Kapitsa's discovery, in 1938, of the superfluidity of liquid
helium, Landau began extensive research which led him to the
construction of the complete theory of the "quantum liquids" at
very low temperatures. His papers of 1941 - 1947 are devoted to
the theory of the quantum liquids of the "Bose type", to which
the superfluid liquid helium (the usual isotope 4He)
refers. During 1956-1958 he formulated the theory of the quantum
liquids of the "Fermi type", to which liquid helium of isotope
3He refers.
In 1946 he was elected to the membership of the Academy of
Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. State Prize was awarded to
him several times, and in 1962 he received, jointly with E.M.
Lifshitz, the Lenin Science Prize for their Course of
Theoretical Physics.
Landau is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (London), of the
Danish Royal Academy of Sciences, of the Netherlands Royal
Academy of Sciences, Foreign Associate of the National Academy of
Sciences of the U.S.A., Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, of the Physical Society (London), and of the
Physical Society of France. In 1961, he received the Max Planck
Medal and the Fritz London Prize.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Lev Landau died on April 1, 1968.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1962