Lev Landau

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Lev Davidovich Landau

Born	January 22, 1908
Died	April 1, 1968
Field	Physics
Notable prizes	Nobel Prize in Physics (1962)

Lev Davidovich Landau (Russian language: Ле́в Дави́дович Ланда́у) (January 22, 1908 – April 1, 1968) was a prominent Soviet physicist of Jewish origin who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. His accomplishments include the co-discovery of the density matrix method in quantum mechanics, the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of second order phase transitions, the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity, the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and the two-component theory of neutrinos. 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 II at a temperature below 2.19K (-270.96°C).

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 The Landau school 1.3 Great Purge 1.4 Death 2 Landau's list 3 Notes 4 Works 4.1 Landau and Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics 5 Books about Landau 6 See also 7 References and further reading

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Landau was born January 22, 1908 into a Jewish family in Baku, Azerbaijan. Recognized very early as a child prodigy in mathematics, Landau was quoted as saying in later life that he scarcely remembered a time when he was not familiar with calculus. Landau graduated at 13 from the Gymnasium and, because he was too young to go to the university, attended the Baku Economical Technical School. At the age of 14, he matriculated at Baku University in 1922, studying in two departments simultaneously: the Physico-mathematical and the Chemical. In 1924 he moved to the Physics Department of Leningrad University, graduating in 1927. Landau subsequently enrolled for post-graduate study at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute and at 21 received a doctorate. Landau got his first chance to go abroad in 1929, on a Soviet government traveling fellowship supplemented by a Rockefeller Fellowship. After brief stays in Gottingen and Leipzig, he went to Copenhagen to work in Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics. Landau always considered himself a pupil of Bohr's, and his attitude to physics was greatly influenced by Bohr's example. After his stay in Copenhagen he visited Cambridge and Zurich before returning to the Soviet Union. In the period of 1932-1937 he headed the department of theoretical physics at Kharkov Mechanics and Machine Building Institute.

[edit] The Landau school

Apart from his theoretical accomplishments, Landau was the principal founder of a great tradition of theoretical physics in the Soviet Union centered at Kharkov (now Kharkiv), sometimes referred to as the "Landau school". He was the head of the Theoretical Division at the Institute for Physical Problems from 1937 until 1962 when, as a result of a car accident, he suffered injuries from which he was never fully to recover.^[1] His students include Lev Pitaevskii, Alexei Abrikosov, Evgeny Lifshitz, Lev Gorkov, Isaak Khalatnikov and Boris Ioffe.

Landau developed a 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 only 43 candidates ever passed. In this way his students became proper physicists, rather than narrow specialists.

It was also in Kharkov that, with his friend and former student, E.M. Lifshitz, he started to write the well-known Course of Theoretical Physics, ten volumes that together span the whole of the subject and are still widely used as graduate-level physics texts.

[edit] Great Purge

During the Great Purge Landau was investigated within the UPTI Affair in Kharkov, but he managed to leave for Moscow. Still, he was arrested on April 27, 1938 and held in a gulag labor camp until his release on April 29, 1939 after the intervention of his colleague Pyotr Kapitsa, an experimental low-temperature physicist.

[edit] Death

January 7, 1962, Landau's car collided with an oncoming lorry. He was severely injured and spent three months in coma. Landau never recovered fully and was much less creative than he used to be. His death on April 1st, 1968 was also a consequence of the injuries from the accident.

[edit] Landau's list

Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he graded into categories. The first division contained Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, the founding fathers of modern quantum physics, and historical 'giants' such as Isaac Newton. Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted himself to a 2. David Mermin was ranked in the fourth division, which was considered quite respectable. Mermin would later write 'My Life with Landau: homage of a 4.5 to a 2'. However, only one physicist made it into the 'superleague', Albert Einstein, who received a 0.5 ranking.^[2]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Dorozynski
2. ^ Hey, Tony (1997). Einstein's Mirror. Cambridge University Press, p. 1. ISBN 0-521-43532-3. 

[edit] Works

[edit] Landau and Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics

• vol. 1: "Mechanics". L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz
• vol. 2: "The Classical Theory of Fields". L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz
• vol. 3: "Quantum Mechanics: Non-Relativistic Theory". L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz
• vol. 4: "Quantum Electrodynamics". V. B. Berestetsky, E. M. Lifshitz and L. P. Pitaevsky
• vol. 5: "Statistical Physics Pt. 1". L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz
• vol. 6: "Fluid Mechanics". L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz
• vol. 7: "Theory of Elasticity". L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz
• vol. 8: "Electrodynamics of Continuous Media". L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz and L. P. Pitaevsky
• vol. 9: "Statistical Physics Pt. 2". E. M. Lifshitz, L. P. Pitaevsky
• vol. 10: "Physical Kinetics". E. M. Lifshitz, L. P. Pitaevsky

[edit] Books about Landau

• Dorozynski, Alexander (1965). The Man They Wouldn't Let Die. (After Landau's 1962 car accident, the physics community around him rallied to attempt to save his life. They managed to prolong his life until 1968.)
• Landau-Drobantseva, Kora: Professor Landau: How We Lived (1999. In original Russian).
• I.M. Khalatnikov (editor): Landau. The physicist and the man. Recollections of L.D. Landau Translated from the Russian by J.B. Sykes. (Pergamon Press, 1989) ISBN 0-08-036383-0
• Janouch, Frantisek: Lev D. Landau: His life and work (CERN, 1979) ASIN B0007AUCL0
• Kojevnikov, Alexei B.: Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists, History of Modern Physical Sciences Series. (Imperial College Press, 2004) ISBN 1-86094-420-5

[edit] See also

• Landau-Hopf theory of turbulence
• Landau (crater)

[edit] References and further reading

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Lev Landau". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
• Lev Davidovich Landau
• Landau’s Theoretical Minimum, Landau’s Seminar, ITEP in the Beginning of the 1950’s by Boris L. Ioffe, Concluding talk at the workshop QCD at the Threshold of the Fourth Decade/Ioeffest.