LANDAU, LEV DAVIDOVICH

LANDAU, LEV DAVIDOVICH (1908–1968), Russian physicist and Nobel Prize winner. Born in Baku, Landau was a young prodigy in mathematics and was allowed to register at Baku University in the faculties of chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the age of 14, and graduated from Leningrad University when he was 19. In 1932 he was appointed head of the theoretical department of the Kharkov Physical-Technical Institute and in 1934 was granted his doctorate without presenting a thesis. He became a professor a year later. While working in Copenhagen with niels bohr , he developed a theory of the diamagnetism of metals known as "Landau's diamagnetism." He also published two comprehensive, seminal works on ferro-magnetic substances in 1936 and 1937. He did research in many fields of physics: low temperature; turbulence; acoustics; plasma theory; energy of stars; quantum field theory; and the neutrino. His outstanding contribution was in the field of low temperatures carried out under the auspices of the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow, which he joined in 1937. In 1962 Landau was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for his "pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium." Although Landau had been awarded the Stalin Prize three times for his work in theoretical physics, he was imprisoned during Stalin's purge, from 1937 to 1939, allegedly as a German spy. He was released when Professor Peter Kapitza, head of his Institute, declared that he would stop all his own scientific work unless Landau was freed. Landau suffered severe injuries in a car crash in 1962, but intensive medical treatment enabled him to live another six years although without resuming his researches. Among his numerous published works are O svoystvakh metallov pri ochen nizkikh temperaturakh ("Properties of Metals at Very Low Temperatures," 1936); Ob istochnikakh zvezdnoy energii ("Sources of Stellar Energy," 1937); O kolebaniyakh elektronnoy plazmy ("Fluctuations of Electronic Plasma," 1946); and O kvantovoy teorii polya ("Quantum Field Theory," 1956). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Dorozynski, The Man They Wouldn't Let Die (1965); V.B. Berestetski, in: Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 64 no. 3 (1958); Prominent Personalities in the U.S.S.R. (1968), S.V. (Maurice Goldsmith)