On Tuesday, Google celebrated the 111th birth anniversary of Soviet physicist Lev Landau with a doodle. Landau was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1962 for his research into liquid helium’s behaviour at extremely low temperatures.
Born in Baku in present-day Azerbaijan on January 22, 1908, the precocious Landau started college well before his peers. At 19, he graduated from the Physical Department of Leningrad University, and started his career at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. He completed his PhD at 21, earned a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, which allowed him to work abroad, in Germany, Switzerland, England and, Copenhagen where he worked under Niels Bohr, who was known for his work in quantum theory.
Landau also worked as a professor of theoretical physics in the Kharkov and Moscow State Universities. Landau’s research covers all branches of theoretical physics, ranging from fluid mechanics to quantum field theory. According to the Nobel Prize website, following 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.”
Several concepts are attributed to Landau, including Landau Distribution, Landau Gauge, Landau Pole. In 1962, the same year of his Nobel Prize, he and E.M. Lifshitz jointly received the Lenin Science Prize for their Course of Theoretical Physics.
In Moscow, the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics stands as a symbol of his legacy.
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