24 Facts About Lev Landau

Lev Davidovich Landau was a Russian and Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.

Lev Landau learned differential calculus at age 12 and integral calculus at age 13.

Lev Landau's parents considered him too young to attend university, so for a year he attended the Baku Economical Technical School.

Lev Landau subsequently enrolled for post-graduate studies at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute where he eventually received a doctorate in Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 1934.

From Zurich Lev Landau went back to Copenhagen for the third time and stayed there from 25 February until 19 March 1931 before returning to Leningrad the same year.

Between 1932 and 1937, Lev Landau headed the Department of Theoretical Physics at the National Scientific Center Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, and he lectured at the University of Kharkiv and the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute.

Apart from his theoretical accomplishments, Lev Landau was the principal founder of a great tradition of theoretical physics in Kharkiv, Ukraine, sometimes referred to as the "Lev Landau school".

Lev Landau developed a famous comprehensive exam called the "Theoretical Minimum" which students were expected to pass before admission to the school.

In 1932, Lev Landau computed the Chandrasekhar limit; however, he did not apply it to white dwarf stars.

From 1937 until 1962, Lev Landau was the head of the Theoretical Division at the Institute for Physical Problems.

On 27 April 1938, Lev Landau was arrested for a leaflet which compared Stalinism to German Nazism and Italian Fascism.

Lev Landau was held in the NKVD's Lubyanka prison until his release, on 29 April 1939, after Pyotr Kapitsa and Bohr wrote letters to Joseph Stalin.

Lev Landau led a team of mathematicians supporting Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb development.

Lev Landau calculated the dynamics of the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb, including predicting the yield.

Lev Landau believed in "free love" rather than monogamy and encouraged his wife and his students to practise "free love".

Lev Landau's drive in establishing Soviet science was in part due to his devotion to socialism.

On 7 January 1962, Lev Landau's car collided with an oncoming truck.

Lev Landau was severely injured and spent two months in a coma.

Lev Landau's injuries prevented him from accepting the 1962 Nobel Prize for physics in person.

In 1965 former students and co-workers of Lev Landau founded the Lev Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, located in the town of Chernogolovka near Moscow, and led for the following three decades by Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov.

Lev Landau died on 1 April 1968, aged 60, from complications of the injuries sustained in the car accident he was involved in six years earlier.

Lev Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5.

Lev Landau ranked himself as a 2.5 but later promoted to a 2.

David Mermin, writing about Lev Landau, referred to the scale, and ranked himself in the fourth division, in the article "My Life with Lev Landau: Homage of a 4.5 to a 2".