Lev Landau's 111th Birthday: Lifestory Biography, Books, Lev Landau (1908-1968)

Krishna Kumar January 22, 2019 0

Lev Landau's 111th Birthday: Lifestory Biography, Books, Lev Landau (1908-1968)

Lev Landau's

Born: 22 January 1908, Baku, Azerbaijan

Died: 1 April 1968, Moscow, Russia

Spouse: Kora Landau-Drobantseva (m.1937)

Notable students: Evgeny Lifshitz, Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov, More

Children: Igor Landau

Lev Landau's 111th Birthday: Lifestory Biography, Books, Lev Landau (1908-1968) - Lev Davidovich Landau was a Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.

Who is Lev Landau.?

Born in 1908 in Baku, then in the Russian Empire, today in Azerbaijan, Landau was a theoretical physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research in liquid helium's behavior at 1962. He was born on 22 January, 111 years ago. Today, his father was an engineer with an oil firm and his mother a doctor.

classmates described him as a "quiet, shy boy" during his school years. But while he did not speak up, he excelled at science and mathematics and extraordinarily completed his studies at the age of 13 in 1920. Being 13, his parents considered him too young to attend university and instead he was named Baku State University in

He studied in two departments simultaneously: The Departments of Physics and Mathematics, and the Department of Chemistry, before leaving the chemistry to focus on the maths. Eventually, he joined the Physics Department of Leningrad University, in 1924, where his first paper, On the Theory of the Spectra of Diatomic Molecules, was already in print when he was 18-years-old.

What did he discover.?

His achievements include:-

The independent co-discovery of the density matrix method in quantum mechanics (alongside John von Neumann)
The theory of second-order phase transitions, the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity
The theory of Fermi liquid, the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics
the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity
The Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, the two-component theory of neutrinos
Landau's equations for S matrix singularities

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Which awards did he win.?

Landau's exceptional talent was recognized during his life and he won a number of highly respected prizes in his field.

Stalin Prize 1946

The prize was a state honor for the Soviet Union. The USSR State Prize was awarded annually to the students of the fields of science, mathematics, literature, arts, and architecture to honor the most prominent achievements which either advanced the Soviet Union or the cause of socialism. Landau won his field of physics.

Max Planck Medal 1960

The Max Planck medal is, to this day, the highest award of the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft), the world's largest organization of physicists.

It is awarded for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. The prize has been awarded annually since 1929, with few exceptions, and usually a single person. Landau was the winner in 1960, accepting the gold medal and hand-written parchment as recognition.

Nobel Prize in Physics 1962

The Nobel Prize is the most widely recognized prize, for which the physics is one of the fields recognized. The award was set-up in the will of Albert Nobel in 1901. A maximum of three Nobel laureates and two different works may be selected for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Compared with other Nobel Prizes, the nomination and selection process for the prize in Physics is long and rigorous. Landau won the prize and accompanying money in 1962.

Political imprisonment and views

Landau was arrested on 27 April 1938 for Stalinism to Nazism.

He was held in the NKVD's Lubyanka prison until his release a year later on 29 April 1939. The head of the institute, Pyotr Kapitsa, an experimental low-temperature physicist, wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin vouching for Landau's behavior. He also threatened to quit the institute if Landau was not released. After his release, Landau discovered how to explain Kapitsa's superfluidity using sound waves, or phonons, and a new excitation called a roton. Landau also was controversial for his views on romance, rejecting the idea of monogamy and believing in "free love" - something he had more He was also an atheist.

He died aged 60 due to complications from a car crash he had been in six years ago.