Lev Landau: short biography, contribution to science. Brief biography of Lev Landau

Soviet physicist Lev Davidovich Landau was born in the family of David and Lyubov Landau in Baku.

His father was a well-known petroleum engineer who worked in the local oil fields, and his mother was a doctor. She was engaged in physiological research. Elder sister L. became a chemical engineer. Although L. studied in high school and graduated brilliantly when he was thirteen years old, his parents felt that he was too young for a higher educational institution, and sent him for a year to the Baku Economic College. In 1922, Mr.. L. entered the Baku University, where he studied physics and chemistry; two years later he transferred to the physics department of Leningrad University. By the time he was 19 years old, L. managed to publish four scientific papers. One of them was the first to use the density matrix, a now widely used mathematical expression for describing quantum energy states. After graduating from university in 1927. L. entered the graduate school of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology, where he worked on the magnetic theory of the electron and quantum electrodynamics.

From 1929 to 1931, Mr.. L. was on a scientific mission in Germany, Switzerland, England, the Netherlands and Denmark. There he met the founders of the then new quantum mechanics, including Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr. Throughout his life, L. retained friendly feelings for Niels Bohr, who had a particularly strong influence on him. While abroad, L. conducted important research on the magnetic properties of free electrons and, together with Ronald F. Peierls - on relativistic quantum mechanics. These works put him forward among the leading theoretical physicists. He learned how to deal with complex theoretical systems, and this skill was useful to him later, when he began research in low-temperature physics.

In 1931, Mr.. L. returned to Leningrad, but soon moved to Kharkov, which was then the capital of Ukraine. There L. becomes the head of the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology. At the same time, he heads the departments of theoretical physics at the Kharkov Mechanical Engineering Institute and at Kharkov University. In 1934, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR awarded him the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences without defending a dissertation, and the following year he received the title of professor. In Kharkov, L. publishes works on such diverse topics as the origin of stellar energy, sound dispersion, energy transfer in collisions, light scattering, magnetic properties of materials, superconductivity, phase transitions of substances from one form to another, and the movement of streams of electrically charged particles. This gives him a reputation as an unusually versatile theorist. Work L. on electrically interacting particles proved useful later, when the physics of plasma - hot, electrically charged gases. Borrowing concepts from thermodynamics, he expressed many innovative ideas regarding low-temperature systems. The works of L. are united by one characteristic feature - the virtuoso application of the mathematical apparatus for solving complex problems. L. made a great contribution to quantum theory and to the study of the nature and interaction of elementary particles.

An unusually wide range of his research, covering almost all areas of theoretical physics, attracted many highly gifted students and young scientists to Kharkov, including Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz, who became not only L.'s closest collaborator, but also his personal friend. The school that grew up around L. turned Kharkov into a leading center of Soviet theoretical physics. Convinced of the need for thorough training theorist in all areas of physics, L. developed a rigorous training program, which he called the "theoretical minimum". The requirements for applicants for the right to participate in the work of the seminar led by him were so high that for thirty years, despite the inexhaustible flow of applicants, only forty people passed the "theoretical minimum" exams. Those who passed the exams, L. generously devoted his time, gave them freedom in choosing the subject of research. With his students and close collaborators, who affectionately called him Dau, he maintained friendly relations. To help his students L. in 1935. created a comprehensive course of theoretical physics, published by him and E.M. Lifshitz in the form of a series of textbooks, the content of which was revised and updated by the authors over the next twenty years. These textbooks, translated into many languages, are deservedly considered classics all over the world. For the creation of this course, the authors were awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962.

In 1937, Mr.. L. at the invitation of Peter Kapitza headed the department of theoretical physics in the newly created Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow. But the following year, L. was arrested on false charges of spying for Germany. Only the intervention of Kapitsa, who applied directly to the Kremlin, made it possible to achieve the release of L.

When L. moved from Kharkov to Moscow, Kapitsa's experiments with liquid helium were full swing. Gaseous helium goes into liquid state when cooled to a temperature below 4.2K (in degrees Kelvin, the absolute temperature measured from absolute zero, or from a temperature of - 273.18 ° C). In this state, helium is called helium-1. When cooled to a temperature below 2.17K, helium turns into a liquid called helium-2, which has unusual properties. Helium-2 flows through the smallest holes with such ease, as if it had no viscosity at all. It rises along the wall of the vessel, as if it were not affected by gravity, and has a thermal conductivity hundreds of times greater than that of copper. Kapitsa called helium-2 a superfluid liquid. But when tested by standard methods, for example, by measuring the resistance to torsional vibrations of a disk at a given frequency, it turned out that helium-2 does not have zero viscosity. Scientists have suggested that the unusual behavior of helium-2 is due to effects related to the field of quantum theory, and not classical physics, which appear only at low temperatures and are usually observed in solids, since most substances freeze under these conditions. Helium is an exception - if it is not subjected to very high pressure, it remains liquid down to absolute zero. In 1938, Laszlo Tissa suggested that liquid helium is actually a mixture of two forms: helium-1 (normal liquid) and helium-2 (superfluid liquid). When the temperature drops to near absolute zero, helium-2 becomes the dominant component. This hypothesis explains why different conditions different viscosities are observed.

L. explained superfluidity using a fundamentally new mathematical apparatus. While other researchers applied quantum mechanics to the behavior of individual atoms, he treated the quantum states of a volume of liquid in much the same way as if it were a solid. L. put forward the hypothesis of the existence of two components of motion, or excitation: phonons, which describe the relatively normal rectilinear propagation of sound waves at low values ​​of momentum and energy, and rotons, which describe rotational motion, i.e. more complex manifestation of excitations at higher values ​​of momentum and energy. The observed phenomena are due to the contributions of phonons and rotons and their interaction. Liquid helium, argued L., can be regarded as a "normal" component, immersed in a superfluid "background". In an experiment on the flow of liquid helium through a narrow slit, the superfluid component flows while phonons and rotons collide with the walls that hold them. In the experiment with torsional vibrations of the disk, the superfluid component has a negligible effect, while phonons and rotons collide with the disk and slow it down. The ratio of the concentrations of the normal and superfluid components depends on the temperature. Rotons dominate at temperatures above 1 K, phonons - below 0.6 K.

The theory of L. and its subsequent improvements made it possible not only to explain the observed phenomena, but also to predict other unusual phenomena, such as the propagation of two different waves, called the first and second sound and having different properties. The first sound is ordinary sound waves, the second is a temperature wave. The theory of L. helped to make significant progress in understanding the nature of superconductivity ..

During the Second World War L. engaged in the study of combustion and explosions, especially shock waves at large distances from the source. After the end of the war and until 1962, he worked on a solution various tasks, including studying a rare isotope of helium with an atomic mass of 3 (instead of the usual mass of 4), and predicting for it the existence of a new type of wave propagation, which he called "zero sound". Note that the speed of the second sound in a mixture of two isotopes tends to zero at absolute zero temperature. L. took part in the creation of the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union.

Shortly before he was fifty-four years old, L. got into a car accident and was seriously injured. Doctors from Canada, France, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union fought for his life. For six weeks he remained unconscious and for almost three months did not even recognize his loved ones. Due to health reasons, L. could not go to Stockholm to receive Nobel Prize 1962, which he was awarded "for the fundamental theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium." The prize was presented to him in Moscow by the Swedish Ambassador to the Soviet Union. L. lived another six years, but was never able to return to work. He died in Moscow from complications arising from his injuries.

In 1937, Mr.. L. married Concordia Drobantseva, a food processing engineer from Kharkov. They had a son, who later worked as an experimental physicist at the same Institute for Physical Problems, in which his father did so much. L. did not tolerate pomposity, and his sharp, often witty criticism sometimes created the impression of him as a cold and even unpleasant person. But P. Kapitsa, who knew L. well, spoke of him as "a very kind and sympathetic person, always ready to help unjustly offended people." After the death of L.E.M. Lifshitz once remarked that L. “always sought to simplify complex issues and show as clearly as possible the fundamental simplicity inherent in the basic phenomena described by the laws of nature. He was especially proud when he managed, as he said, to "trivialize" the task.

In addition to the Nobel and Lenin Prizes L. were awarded three State Prizes of the USSR. He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. In 1946 he was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The academies of sciences of Denmark, the Netherlands and the USA, the American Academy of Sciences and Arts have elected its members. French Physical Society, Physical Society of London and Royal Society of London.

Semyon Solomonovich Gershtein,
Academician, Institute for High Energy Physics (Protvino)
"Nature" №1, 2008

One of the greatest physicists of the past XX century. Lev Davidovich Landau was at the same time the greatest generalist who made fundamental contributions to various fields: quantum mechanics, solid state physics, the theory of magnetism, the theory of phase transitions, nuclear physics and elementary particle physics, quantum electrodynamics, low temperature physics, hydrodynamics, theory atomic collisions, the theory of chemical reactions and a number of other disciplines.

Fundamental contributions to theoretical physics

The ability to cover all branches of physics and penetrate deeply into them is a characteristic feature of his genius. It was clearly manifested in the unique course of theoretical physics created by L.D. Landau in collaboration with E.M. Lifshitz, the last volumes of which were completed according to Landau’s plan by his students E.M. Lifshitz, L.P. Pitaevsky and V.B. Berestetsky. Nothing like this exists in all world literature. Completeness of presentation, combined with clarity and originality, a unified approach to problems and an organic connection of various volumes made this course table book for many generations of physicists from different countries, from students to professors. Being translated into many languages, the course had a huge impact on the level of theoretical physics all over the world. Undoubtedly, it will retain its significance for scientists of the future. Minor additions related to the latest data may be introduced, as has already been done, in subsequent editions.

It is impossible to mention all the results obtained by Landau in a short article. I will dwell only on some of them.

While still studying at Leningrad University, Landau and his then close friends Georgy Gamov, Dmitri Ivanenko, and Matvei Bronstein were delighted with the appearance of articles by W. Heisenberg and E. Schrödinger, which contained the foundations of quantum mechanics. And almost immediately, the 18-year-old Landau makes a fundamental contribution to quantum theory—introducing the concept of a density matrix as a method for a complete quantum mechanical description of systems that are part of a larger system. This concept has become fundamental in quantum statistics.

Landau was concerned with the application of quantum mechanics to real physical processes throughout his life. Thus, in 1932, he pointed out that the probability of transitions in atomic collisions is determined by the intersection of molecular terms, and derived the corresponding expressions for the probability of transitions and predissociation of molecules (the Landau-Zener-Stückelberg rule). In 1944, he (together with Ya. A. Smorodinsky) developed the theory of "effective radius", which makes it possible to describe the scattering of slow particles by short-range nuclear forces, regardless of the specific model of the latter.

Landau's work has made a fundamental contribution to the physics of magnetic phenomena. In 1930, he established that in a magnetic field, free electrons in metals have, according to quantum mechanics, a quasi-discrete energy spectrum, and due to this, a diamagnetic (associated with orbital motion) susceptibility of electrons in metals arises. In low magnetic fields, it is one third of their paramagnetic susceptibility, determined by the intrinsic magnetic moment of the electron (related to the spin). At the same time, he pointed out that in a real crystal lattice this ratio can change in favor of electron diamagnetism, and in strong fields at low temperatures an unusual effect should be observed: oscillations of the magnetic susceptibility. This effect was discovered experimentally a few years later; it is known as the de Haas-van Alphen effect. The energy levels of electrons in a magnetic field are called Landau levels.

Determining them for different orientations of the magnetic field makes it possible to find the Fermi surface (an isoenergetic surface in the space of quasi-momenta corresponding to the Fermi energy) for electrons in metals and semiconductors. A general theory for these purposes was developed by Landau's student I. M. Lifshitz and his school. Thus, Landau's work on electronic diamagnetism laid the foundation for all modern activity in establishing the electronic energy spectra of metals and semiconductors. We also note that the presence of Landau levels turned out to be decisive for the interpretation of the quantum Hall effect (for the discovery and explanation of which the Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1985 and 1998).

In 1933, Landau introduced the concept of antiferromagnetism as a special phase of matter. Shortly before him, the French physicist L. Neel suggested that there could be substances that at low temperatures consist of two crystal sublattices spontaneously magnetized in opposite directions. Landau pointed out that the transition to this state with decreasing temperature should not occur gradually, but at a very specific temperature as a special phase transition, in which not the density of the substance changes, but the symmetry. These ideas were brilliantly used by Landau's student I. E. Dzyaloshinskii to predict the existence of new types of magnetic structures—weak ferromagnets and piezomagnets—and to indicate the symmetry of crystals in which they should be observed. Together with E. M. Lifshitz in 1935, Landau developed the theory of the domain structure of ferromagnets, for the first time determined their shape and dimensions, described the behavior of susceptibility in an alternating magnetic field and, in particular, the phenomenon of ferromagnetic resonance.

Of paramount importance for the theory of various physical phenomena in substances is the general theory of phase transitions of the second kind, constructed by Landau in 1937. Landau generalized the approach used for antiferromagnets: any phase transformations are associated with a change in the symmetry of a substance, and therefore a phase transition should occur not gradually, but in a certain point where the symmetry of matter changes abruptly. If this does not change the density and specific entropy of the substance, the phase transition is not accompanied by the release of latent heat. At the same time, the heat capacity and compressibility of the substance change abruptly. Such transitions are called transitions of the second kind. These include transitions to the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases, transitions to a ferroelectric, structural transitions in crystals, and the transition of a metal to a superconducting state in the absence of a magnetic field. Landau showed that all these transitions can be described using some structural parameter that is nonzero in the ordered phase below the transition point and equal to zero above it.

In the work of V. L. Ginzburg and L. D. Landau “On the theory of superconductivity”, performed in 1950, the function Ψ was chosen as such a parameter characterizing a superconductor, playing the role of some “effective” wave function of superconducting electrons. The constructed semiphenomenological theory made it possible to calculate the surface energy at the interface between the normal and superconducting phases and was in good agreement with experiment. Based on this theory, A. A. Abrikosov introduced the concept of two types of superconductors: type I - with positive surface energy - and type II - with negative. Most of the alloys turned out to be type II superconductors. Abrikosov showed that the magnetic field penetrates into type II superconductors gradually by means of special quantum vortices, and therefore the transition to the normal phase is delayed to a very long time. high values magnetic field strength. It is these superconductors with critical parameters that are widely used in science and technology. After the creation of the macroscopic theory of superconductivity, L.P. Gorkov showed that the Ginzburg-Landau equations follow from the microscopic theory, and clarified the physical meaning of the phenomenological parameters used in them. The general theory of the description of superconductivity entered the world science under the acronym GLAG - Ginzburg-Landau-Abrikosov-Gorkov. In 2004, Ginzburg and Abrikosov were awarded the Nobel Prize for it.

One of Landau's most remarkable works was his theory of superfluidity, which explained the phenomenon of superfluidity of liquid helium-4 discovered by P. L. Kapitsa. According to Landau, the atoms of liquid helium, closely bound together, form a special quantum liquid at low temperatures. The excitations of this liquid are sound waves, which correspond to quasi-particles - phonons. The phonon energy ε represents the energy of the entire liquid, not individual atoms, and should be proportional to their momentum p: ε(p) = cp(where with - sound speed). At temperatures near absolute zero, these excitations cannot occur if the fluid is flowing at a speed less than the speed of sound, and thus it will not have viscosity. At the same time, as Landau believed in 1941, along with the potential flow of liquid helium, a vortex flow is also possible. The spectrum of vortex excitations had to be separated from zero by some "gap" Δ and have the form

where μ is the effective mass of the quasiparticle corresponding to the excitation. At the suggestion of I. E. Tamm, Lev Davidovich called this particle a roton. Using the spectrum of quasiparticles, he found the temperature dependence of the heat capacity of liquid helium and derived the equations of hydrodynamics for it. He showed that in a number of problems the motion of helium is equivalent to the motion of two fluids: normal (viscous) and superfluid (ideal). In this case, the density of the latter vanishes above the transition point to the superfluid state and can serve as a parameter of a second-order phase transition. A remarkable consequence of this theory was Landau's prediction of the existence of special oscillations in liquid helium, when normal and superfluid liquids oscillate in antiphase.

He called it the second sound and predicted its speed. The discovery of the second sound in the excellent experiments of V. P. Peshkov was a brilliant confirmation of the theory. However, Landau was alarmed by the small difference between the observed and predicted speed of the second sound. After analyzing it, he concluded in 1947 that instead of two branches of the excitation spectrum—phonon and roton—there should be a single dependence of the excitation energy on the momentum of the quasiparticle, which increases linearly with the momentum (phonons) at small momenta, and at a certain value of the momentum ( p 0) has a minimum and can be represented near it in the form

At the same time, as Lev Davidovich emphasized, all conclusions regarding the superfluidity and macroscopic hydrodynamics of helium-2 are preserved. In a subsequent paper (1948), Landau referred as an additional argument to the fact that N. N. Bogolyubov in 1947 had succeeded in using an ingenious trick to obtain the excitation spectrum of a weakly interacting Bose gas represented by a single curve with linear dependence at low impulses. (Perhaps it was this work by Bogolyubov, together with Peshkov's data, that prompted Landau to the idea of ​​a single excitation curve.) Landau's theory of superfluidity was brilliantly confirmed in the remarkable experiments of V. P. Peshkov, E. L. Andronikashvili, and others, and was further developed in joint the works of Landau with I. M. Khalatnikov. Landau's excitation spectrum was directly confirmed by experiments on the scattering of x-rays and neutrons (R. Feynman pointed out this possibility).

In 1956-1957. Landau developed the theory of a Fermi liquid (a quantum liquid in which elementary excitations have a half-integer spin and, accordingly, obey Fermi–Dirac statistics) applicable to a wide range of objects (electrons in metals, liquid helium-3, nucleons in nuclei). From the point of view of the developed approach, the microscopic theory of superconductivity, which predicts new phenomena in this field, is most naturally constructed. The prospects for using the methods of quantum field theory for calculations in the field of condensed matter theory have opened up. Further development of the theory of the Fermi liquid by L.P. Pitaevskii allowed him to predict that at a sufficiently low temperature, helium-3 would become superfluid. An exceptionally beautiful nontrivial phenomenon—the reflection of electrons at the boundary of a superconductor with a normal metal—was predicted by A.F. Andreev, the last student whom Landau accepted into his group. This phenomenon has received the name "Andreev's reflection" in the world literature and is beginning to find more and more widespread use.

From the very beginning of his career, Lev Davidovich was interested in the problems of quantum field theory and relativistic quantum mechanics. The derivation of formulas for the scattering of relativistic electrons by the Coulomb field of atomic nuclei, taking into account the delay in interaction (the so-called Möller scattering), as Meller himself noted, was suggested to him by Landau. In his work with E. M. Livshits (1934), Lev Davidovich considered the production of electrons and positrons in the collision of charged particles. The generalization of the results obtained in this work led, after the creation of electron-positron colliders, to an important direction experimental studies— two-photon physics. In his work with VB Berestetsky (1949), Lev Davidovich Landau drew attention to the importance of the so-called exchange interaction in a system of particles and antiparticles. An important role in elementary particle physics is played by Landau's theorem (also established independently by T. Lee and C. Yang) on ​​the impossibility of decay of a particle with spin 1 into two free photons (it is also valid for decay into two gluons). This theorem is widely used in elementary particle physics. It, in essence, made it possible to explain the small width of the particle ?/Ψ, causing confusion at first.

Results of fundamental importance for particle physics were obtained by Lev Davidovich together with his students A. A. Abrikosov, I. M. Khalatnikov, I. Ya. in theoretical calculations of some physical quantities(for example, masses) to infinity. The latest development of quantum electrodynamics has provided a recipe for eliminating infinite expressions. But this did not suit Landau. He set the task of developing a theory in which finite quantities would appear at each stage. To do this, it was necessary to consider the local interaction of particles as the limit of the "smeared" interaction, which has a finite, arbitrarily decreasing radius of action a. This radius value corresponded to the “cutoff” of infinite integrals in the momentum space: Λ ≈ 1/a and "seed" charge e 1 (a) , which is a function of the radius a. AT As a result of the calculations, it turned out that the “physical” electron charge observed at low field frequencies ( e) is associated with the seed e 1 (a) formula

where ν is the number of fermions, which, in addition to electrons, contribute to the vacuum polarization, t - the mass of an electron, and the charges e and e 1 - dimensionless quantities expressed in units of the speed of light ( with) and Planck's constant ћ:

The expression for the "seed" charge, according to (1), had the form

Interestingly, even before the calculations, Landau believed that the "seed" charge e 1 (a) will decrease and tend to zero with decreasing radius a, and thus a self-consistent theory will be obtained (since the calculations were made under the assumption e 1 2 1). He even developed a general philosophy corresponding to the modern principle of "asymptotic freedom" in quantum chromodynamics. Preliminary calculations seemed to support this view. But in these calculations, an unfortunate mistake was made in the sign in formulas (1) and, accordingly, (2). (If the sign in (2) is wrong, indeed e 1→ 0 as Λ → ∞.) When the error was noticed, Lev Davidovich managed to take the article from the editorial office and correct it. At the same time, the philosophy of “asymptotic freedom” disappeared from the article. It's a pity. Knowing it, the Novosibirsk theorist from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yu. B. Khriplovich, having found in a particular example that the color charge in quantum chromodynamics decreases with decreasing distance, could possibly construct a general theory (for which the Americans D. Gross, D. Politzer and F. Wilczek received the Nobel Prize already in the 21st century). However, in quantum electrodynamics, the effective electric charge increases with decreasing distance. Experiments on colliders have shown that the effective charge at distances of ~2 10 -16 cm has grown to a value of ~1/128 (compared to 1/137 at large distances). The growth of the effective charge e 1 (a) led Landau and Pomeranchuk to a conclusion of fundamental importance: if the second term in the denominator of formula (1) becomes substantially greater than unity, then the charge e regardless e 1 equals

and vanishes as Λ → ∞ or a ~ 1/Λ → 0. Although there is no rigorous proof of such a conclusion (the theory was constructed for e 1 1), Pomeranchuk found strong arguments in favor of the fact that expression (3) is also valid for the value e 1 ≥ 1. This conclusion (if it is correct) means that the existing theory is internally inconsistent, since it leads to the zero value of the observed electron charge. However, there is another solution to the "null-charge" problem, which is that the quantity a(or charge dimensions) have a finite value, not zero. As Landau noted, the "crisis" of the theory sets in precisely at those values ​​of Λ at which the gravitational interaction becomes strong, i.e., at distances of the order of 10 -33 cm (or energies of the order of 10 19 GeV). In other words, hope remains for a unified theory that includes gravity and leads to an elementary length of the order of 10 -33 cm. This hypothesis anticipated the currently widely held view.

The notion of combined CP parity, introduced by Lev Davidovich in 1956, is of paramount importance for modern physics. interactions, Landau treated them very critically at first. “I can’t understand how, with the isotropy of space, right and left can differ,” he said. Due to the fact that symmetry must be observed in the local theory with respect to the simultaneous implementation of three transformations: spatial reflection (P), time reversal (T) and charge conjugation (transition from particles to antiparticles (C)) - the so-called CPT theorem, violation of the spatial symmetry (P) should inevitably lead to the violation of any other symmetries. Pomeranchuk's colleagues B. L. Ioffe and A. P. Rudik believed at first that the T-symmetry should have been broken, since the conservation of C-symmetry, according to the idea of ​​M. Gell-Mann and A. Pais, explained the presence of a long-lived and short-lived neutral kaons. However, L. B. Okun noticed that the latter can also be explained by the preservation of T-symmetry with respect to time reversal. As a result of the discussions that Landau led with Pomeranchuk's students, he came to the conclusion that, in the case of complete isotropy of space, the violation of mirror symmetry in processes with some particles should be associated with a difference in the interaction of particles and antiparticles: processes with antiparticles should look like a mirror image of similar processes with particles. He compared this situation with the fact that with complete isotropy of space, asymmetric "right" and "left" modifications of crystals can exist, which are mirror images of each other. Based on this, he introduced the concept of combined CP symmetry and conserved CP parity. Subsequent experiments seemed to brilliantly confirm the conservation of CP parity until, in 1964, "milliweak" CP violation (at a level of 10 -3 from the weak interaction) was discovered in the decays of long-lived neutral kaons. The study of CP violation has become the subject of many theoretical and experimental studies. At present, CP violation is well described at the quark level and has also been found in processes with b-quarks. According to A. D. Sakharov's hypothesis, violations of CP symmetry and the law of conservation of the baryon number can lead during the evolution of the early Universe to its baryon asymmetry (ie, the observed absence of antimatter in it).

Simultaneously with the concept of CP parity, Landau put forward a hypothesis about a helical (two-component) neutrino, whose spin is directed along (or against) the momentum. (Independently, this was done by A. Salam, T. Lee, and C. Yang.) Such a neutrino corresponded to the maximum possible violation of space and charge parity separately and the preservation of CP parity. The left neutrino corresponded to the right antineutrino, and the left antineutrino should not exist at all. Based on this hypothesis, Lev Davidovich predicted that electrons in the process of β-decay should be almost completely polarized against their momentum (if the neutrino is left), and two neutral light particles emitted in the process of μ-decay (μ - → e - +νν"), must be different neutrinos. (Now we know that one of them is a muon neutrino, ν = ν μ , and the second is an electron antineutrino, ν" = ν̃ e.) The concept of the spiral neutrino seemed attractive to Landau also because the spiral neutrino had to be massless. This seemed to agree with the fact that the experiments, as the accuracy increased, gave an increasingly lower upper limit on the mass of the neutrino. The idea of ​​the spiral neutrino suggested to Feynman and Gell-Mann the hypothesis that, perhaps, all other particles (with non-zero mass) participate in the weak interaction, like neutrinos, with their left-handed spiral components. (By that time, it had already been established that neutrinos had left-handed helicity.) This hypothesis led Feynman and Gell-Mann, as well as R. Marshak and E. S. G. Sudarshan, to the discovery of the fundamental ( V-A) the law of weak interaction, which pointed to the analogy of weak and electromagnetic interactions and stimulated the discovery of the unified nature of weak and electromagnetic interactions.

Landau always reacted quickly to the discovery of new unknown phenomena and their theoretical interpretation. Back in 1937, together with Yu. B. Rumer, starting from the physical idea of ​​the cascade origin of electromagnetic showers observed in cosmic rays, which was expressed by H. Baba with W. Heitler and J. Carlson with R. Oppenheimer, created an elegant theory this complex phenomenon. Using the effective cross sections for bremsstrahlung of hard gamma quanta by electrons and positrons and the effective cross section for the production of electron-positron pairs by gamma quanta known from quantum electrodynamics, Landau and Rumer obtained equations that determine the development of showers. By solving these equations, they found the number of particles in the shower and their energy distribution as a function of the depth of penetration of the shower into the atmosphere. In subsequent works (1940-1941), Lev Davidovich determined the width of the shower and the angular distribution of particles in the shower. He also pointed out that the showers observed underground could be caused by heavier penetrating particles (the "hard" component of cosmic rays, which, as it became known, is muons). The methods and results of these works laid the foundation for all subsequent experimental and theoretical studies. They currently have importance for research in high energy physics in two directions. On the one hand, the theory of electromagnetic showers is very important for determining the energy and type of the primary particle in cosmic rays, especially at limiting energies of the order of 10 19 -10 20 eV. On the other hand, the operation of electromagnetic calorimeters, which have become one of the main devices at modern high-energy colliders, is based on this theory. Landau's determination of the number of charged particles at the shower maximum, as well as his remarkable work on the fluctuations of ionization losses by fast particles (1944), are very important for modern experimental studies at high energies. Lev Davidovich returned to electron-shower processes in 1953 in joint work with Pomeranchuk. In these papers, it was indicated that the length of the formation of γ-ray bremsstrahlung by a fast electron grows in proportion to the square of the electron energy: l~λγ 2 (where λ — the wavelength of the emitted γ-quantum, and γ = E/ts 2 — Lorentz factor of a fast electron). Therefore, in a substance, it can become larger than the effective length of multiple electron scattering, and this will lead to a decrease in the probability of emission of long-wavelength radiation (Landau-Pomeranchuk effect).

A number of Lev Davidovich's works were devoted to astrophysics. In 1932, independently of S. Chandrasekhar, he established an upper limit on the mass of white dwarfs—stars consisting of a degenerate relativistic Fermi gas of electrons. He noticed that at masses greater than this limit (~1.5), catastrophic compression of the star would have to occur (a phenomenon that subsequently served as the basis for the idea of ​​the existence of black holes). In order to avoid such "absurd" (in his words) tendencies, he was even ready to admit that the laws of quantum mechanics were violated in the relativistic region. In 1937, Landau pointed out that with a large compression of a star in the course of its evolution, the process of electron capture by protons and the formation of a neutron star becomes energetically favorable. He even believed that this process could be a source of stellar energy. This work became widely known as a prediction of the inevitability of education. neutron stars during the evolution of stars of a sufficiently large mass (the idea of ​​the possibility of the existence of which was expressed by astrophysicists W. Baade and F. Zwicky almost immediately after the discovery of the neutron).

An important section in Landau's work is his work on hydrodynamics and physical kinetics. The latter, in addition to works related to processes in liquid helium, include works on kinetic equations for particles with Coulomb interaction (1936) and the well-known classical work on electron plasma oscillations (1946). In this work, Lev Davidovich, using the equation derived by A. A. Vlasov, showed that free oscillations in a plasma decay even when particle collisions can be neglected. (Vlasov himself studied another problem—stationary plasma oscillations.) Landau established the plasma damping decrement as a function of the wave vector, and also studied the question of the penetration of an external periodic field into the plasma. The term "Landau damping" has firmly entered the world literature.

In classical hydrodynamics, Lev Davidovich found a rare case of an exact solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, namely, the problem of a submerged jet. Considering the process of the emergence of turbulence, Landau proposed a new approach to this problem. A whole cycle of his works was devoted to the study of shock waves. In particular, he discovered that during supersonic motion at a large distance from the source, two shock waves arise in the medium. A number of problems about shock waves that Lev Davidovich solved within the framework of the atomic project (including with S. Dyakov), apparently, still remain unclassified.

In his work with KP Stanyukovich (1945), Landau studied the question of the detonation of condensed explosives and calculated the velocity of their products. This issue acquired particular importance in 1949 in connection with the upcoming tests of the first Soviet atomic bomb. The velocity of the detonation products of conventional explosives was of decisive importance in order for their compression of the plutonium charge to exceed its critical mass. As it became known now, the measurement of the velocity of detonation products was carried out at the beginning of 1949 in Arzamas-16 by two different laboratories. At the same time, in one of the laboratories, due to a methodological error, a speed was obtained that was significantly lower than that required to compress the plutonium charge. One can imagine what anxiety this caused among the participants in the atomic project. However, after the error was sorted out, it turned out that the measured velocity of the detonation products was sufficient and very close to that predicted by Landau and Stanyukovich.

Knowing Lev Davidovich as an outstanding universal theorist, equally well versed in nuclear physics, gas dynamics, and physical kinetics, I. V. Kurchatov insisted that he be involved in the atomic project from the very beginning. The significance of Landau's work in this project can be partly judged, if only by the words of one of its outstanding participants, Academician L.P. Feoktistov: “... the first formulas for the explosion power were derived in Landau's group. That's what they were called - Landau's formulas - and they were quite well done, especially for that time. Using them, we predicted all the results. At first, the errors were no more than twenty percent. No counting machines: it was then that the girls arrived, they counted in Mercedes, and we - on slide rules. No electronics, no partial differential equations. The formula was derived from general nuclear hydrodynamic considerations and included certain parameters that had to be adjusted. So the help of the Landau group was very tangible. It must be said that "nuclear combustion in conditions of rapidly changing geometry" - this is how, according to the participant of the project, Academician V.N. Mikhailov, the report of the Landau group was called - represented exclusively difficult task, since in this case, in addition to the nuclear reaction, it was necessary to take into account very many factors: the transfer of matter, neutrons, radiation, etc. I think that only Landau could solve such problems and obtain "working" formulas, and at the same time it was interesting to him.

Another thing is when in the early 50s he had to work for self-preservation on other people's assignments related to specific designs. But even in this case, feeling disgust for this work for various reasons, he performed it on his own high level, developing effective methods numerical calculations.

In a short note, it is difficult to dwell on many other important works of Lev Davidovich: on crystallography, combustion, physical chemistry, statistical theory of the nucleus, multiple production of particles at high energies, etc. However, what has already been said is enough to understand that in the person of Landau we have a brilliant physicist , one of the greatest universals in the history of science.

"Flaming Communist"

Landau was never a member of the party. The father of the American hydrogen bomb, E. Teller, who met Lev Davidovich during their joint stay in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, called him “a fiery communist.” Explaining his intention to work on the hydrogen bomb, Teller cited “the psychological shock when Stalin imprisoned my good friend, the outstanding physicist Lev Landau,” as one of the reasons. He was an ardent communist, and I knew him from Leipzig and Copenhagen. I came to the conclusion that Stalinist communism was no better than Hitler's Nazi dictatorship."

Teller had every reason to consider Landau an "ardent communist." In private conversations, speeches in the student society, newspaper interviews, he spoke with admiration of the revolutionary transformations in Soviet Russia. He talked about the fact that in Soviet Russia the means of production belong to the state and the workers themselves, and therefore in the USSR there is no exploitation of the majority by a minority, and each person works for the welfare of the whole country: that great attention is paid to science and education: the university system is expanding and scientific institutions, significant amounts are allocated for scholarships to students (see articles by X. Casimir and J. R. Pellam). He sincerely believed that the revolution would destroy all bourgeois prejudices, which he treated with great contempt, as well as undeserved privileges. He naively believed that a bright future was open before people, and therefore every person is simply obliged to organize his life in such a way as to be happy. And happiness, he argued, lies in creative work and free love, when both partners are equal and live without any bourgeois remnants, philistinism, jealousy, and part if love has passed. The family, however, as he believed, must be preserved for the upbringing of children. Such views were actively disseminated in the 1920s by some revolutionary intellectuals such as the well-known A. Kollontai.

The enthusiasm of the builder of a new society remained with Landau even after returning to his homeland, although the surrounding reality could be in doubt. After all, he moved to Kharkov in 1932 and lived there during the terrible famine in Ukraine. But it was precisely at this time that he set the task of making Soviet theoretical physics the best in the world. It was for this purpose that he conceived and began to write his wonderful "Course", to gather talented youth and create his famous school. At the same time, he wanted to write a physics textbook for schoolchildren. This unfulfilled desire he kept until the end of his life.

He associated the repressions of the 37th exclusively with the dictatorship of Stalin and his clique. “The great cause of the October Revolution is basely betrayed. The country is flooded with torrents of blood and dirt, ”this is how the leaflet begins, drawn up, as they say in Landau’s investigative file, with his participation. And further: “Stalin compared himself with Hitler and Mussolini. Destroying the country for the sake of maintaining his power, Stalin turns it into an easy prey for brutal German fascism. The last words sound prophetic. For the extermination by the Stalinist system of the highest command cadres of the Red Army, industry leaders and talented designers, the country paid with the tragedy of the initial period of the Great Patriotic War and millions of human lives. The leaflet called on the working class and all working people to resolutely fight for socialism against Stalinist and Hitlerite fascism.

The leaflet certainly reflects Landau's convictions. However, some people who knew him doubt that he really participated in its compilation. Their arguments boil down to the fact that Lev Davidovich, who has achieved great success in science and considering it his vocation, could not but be aware of the mortal danger of participating in the struggle against the Stalinist regime. In my opinion, this is incorrect.

I think that the investigative file basically correctly reflects the story of the appearance of the leaflet. Landau's old comrade and former assistant M.A. Korets came to Landau with a text that Landau corrected but refused to deal with his future fate. Although the text of the leaflet presented to Landau during the interrogation was written by Korets, the clarity and brevity of the wording in it are characteristic of Lev Davidovich's style and convincingly testify in favor of his co-authorship. Whether Korets had the moral right to drag Landau into this hopeless and deadly adventure is another matter. Did he realize that he was endangering the life of a genius? Wasn't all this a provocation that Korets himself fell into? (The arrest of Landau and Korets took place five days after the leaflet was written.)

A stay in prison, which lasted exactly a year, made Lev Davidovich become more cautious, but in no way changed his socialist views and devotion to the country. He actively participated in military developments during the Great Patriotic War (for which he received his first order in 1943). From the first half of 1943 (i.e., almost from the very beginning of the atomic project), he began to carry out individual work related to this project, and in 1944 I. V. Kurchatov, in a letter to L. P. Beria, indicates the need full involvement of Landau in the project. In the memorandum of A.P. Aleksandrov, it is indicated that Landau completed the theory of “boilers” in March 1947 and, together with Laboratory-2 and the Institute of Chemical Physics, is working on the development of reactions in a critical mass. It is also noted that he leads a theoretical seminar at Laboratory-2. Some post-perestroika historians of science believe that Landau was forced to participate in the atomic project solely for the purpose of self-preservation. This is perhaps true for recent years before Stalin's death, when tensions were escalating inside and outside the country, and Lev Davidovich had to work on someone else's assignments. But this is not true for the first post-war years. This is evidenced by the speeches of Landau himself, who could not be forced by any means to say anything other than what he thinks. In a speech prepared for central radio broadcasting in June 1946, Lev Davidovich, who is usually not inclined to rhetoric, writes: “Russian scientists have contributed to solving the problem of the atom. The role of Soviet science in these studies is constantly growing. In terms of the new five-year plan and the restoration and development of the economy, experimental and theoretical work is planned, which should lead to practical use nuclear energy for the benefit of our Motherland and in the interests of all mankind.

After Stalin's death, Landau hoped that the socialist principles in which he believed would be restored in the country. “We will still see the sky in diamonds,” he quoted Chekhov. "Wow, where are the diamonds?" - teased him several years later, his sister Sofya Davidovna, a beautiful, most intelligent woman, a truly Leningrad intellectual who graduated from the Technological Institute and contributed to the production of titanium in our country. Landau supported Khrushchev's criticism of Stalin. He said: "Don't scold Khrushchev for not doing it earlier, during Stalin's lifetime, you should praise him for having decided to do it now." At one of the receptions in the Kremlin, A.P. Alexandrov brought Lev Davidovich to Khrushchev, and, as Dau said, they uttered compliments to each other.

A well-known physicist close to Landau's circle said several years ago that Landau was a "coward". I could not believe the newspaper interview, considering this statement to be a journalist's mistake. However, I soon heard the same assessment made by the same person on a TV show. This literally shocked me. Indeed, Landau bitterly called himself a coward. But those who knew him understood what a high bar he had in mind.

Didn't Dau stand up for the condemned Korets during the Kharkov period (and achieve his release)? Didn't he dare to drive away from himself the man who spoke in the trial of Korets with a statement that Landau and L. V. Shubnikov constituted a counter-revolutionary group at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology? (This statement later led to the arrest of L. V. Shubnikov and L. V. Rozenkevich, and, according to the testimony extorted from them, to the arrest of Landau himself.) How many examples of simply reckless courage can be found to participate in writing an anti-Stalinist leaflet in years of mass terror? Of course, after being released, Landau became more cautious. Above all, he knew that he had left on the guarantee of P.L. Kapitsa was not supposed to let him down.

Nevertheless, Lev Davidovich did what his more prudent colleagues tried to avoid. He himself went to the post office and sent money to the exiled Rumer, took care of Shubnikov's widow O. N. Trapeznikova, regularly went to the dacha to the disgraced Kapitsa. In the midst of all sorts of ideological campaigns, he signed letters against the ignorant criticism of the theory of relativity and in defense of a colleague accused of cosmopolitanism (the same one who later called him cowardly). There were other actions that Dow did not talk about.

“In the character of Dau, along with certain elements of physical timidity (he, like me, by the way, was afraid of dogs) there was a rare moral firmness,” recalls Academician M. A. Styrikovich, an old friend of Landau and his sister. “Before, and especially later (in difficult times), if he considered himself right, he could not be persuaded to compromise, even if it was necessary to avoid serious real danger.”

This quality of Dow manifested itself during his time in prison. According to the investigator's note, prepared, apparently, for the high authorities, Landau stood for 7 hours during interrogations, sat in the office for 6 days without talking (and, apparently, without sleep. - ST.), Investigator Litkens “persuaded” him for 12 hours, the investigators “swung, but did not beat”, threatened to be transferred to Lefortovo (where, as they knew in the cell, they were tortured), showed the confessions of his Kharkov friends who had been shot by that time. And he went on a hunger strike and, contrary to the investigator’s assertion that he “named Kapitsa and Semenov as members of the organization that led my a / s work,” did not sign the protocol of interrogation before he made a “clarification” according to which he “only counted on Kapitsa and Semenov as an anti-Soviet asset, but did not dare to be completely frank, not being close enough with them, and besides, my relationship of dependence on Kapitsa did not allow me to take risks. At the first opportunity, during an interrogation conducted by Beria's deputy Kobulov, "he refused all his testimony as fictitious, stating, however, that during the investigation no physical measures were applied to him." One involuntarily recalls the words of the poet Gumilyov, beloved by Lev Davidovich, from the poem “Gondla”: “Yes, nature and steel mixed into his bone structure,” referring to a physically weak but strong-minded person.

Landau tried not to participate in philosophical discussions and never went so far as to accuse the creators of quantum mechanics that, for example, they recognize the “free will of the electron.”

In the autumn of 1953, when the Stalinist order was still alive, Landau greatly frightened some of his colleagues close to him. After a successful test of the hydrogen bomb, he was presented with the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and by decision of the government he was assigned security. Dow rebelled against this. He said that he wrote a letter to the government, which said: “My work is nervous and cannot stand the presence of strangers. Otherwise, they will guard the corpse, scientifically.” The people around were frightened of the punishment that could follow due to the refusal of protection. E. M. Lifshitz even made a special trip to Leningrad and persuaded Landau's sister to influence Dau so that he would come to terms. But she resolutely refused. In connection with the letter of Lev Davidovich, he was received by the Minister of Medium Machine Building and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers V. A. Malyshev. In a narrow circle, Dau told how the conversation went. Malyshev said that it was an honor to have guards, members of the Central Committee had them. "Well, that's their own business," Dow replied. “But there is now an outbreak of banditry in the country, can you imagine great value you need to be protected." “I prefer to be stabbed to death in a dark alley,” Dow said. “But maybe you are afraid that the guards will prevent you from wooing women? Do not be afraid, on the contrary ... ". “Well, this is my personal life, and it should not concern you,” Dow replied. Listening to this story, a young mathematician from the Thermal Engineering Laboratory (TTL, now ITEP) A. Kronrod exclaimed: “Well, for this conversation, Dau, you should have been given not the Hero of Socialist Labor, but the Hero of the Soviet Union.”

Landau also protested against the fact that he was not allowed to attend international scientific conferences. On this occasion, he also wrote somewhere “upstairs”. He was received by N. A. Mukhitdinov (then such a secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU) and promised to settle the issue. Apparently, this was the reason for the request of the Science Department of the Central Committee to the KGB and the receipt of the now known certificate. From the testimonies of agents - secret employees surrounded by Landau - and the wiretapping data given in the KGB certificate, it is clear that, retaining some illusions, he eventually comes to the following conclusion: “I reject that our system is socialist, because the means of production do not belong to the people, but to the bureaucrats.”

He predicts the inevitable collapse of the Soviet system. And he discusses the ways in which this can happen: “If our system cannot collapse in a peaceful way, then a third world war is inevitable ... So the question of the peaceful liquidation of our system is a question of the fate of mankind, in essence.” Such predictions were made by the "fiery communist" in 1957, more than thirty years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Landau as I knew him

During my studies at Moscow State University, academic science was expelled from the Faculty of Physics. My thesis supervisor was Professor Anatoly Aleksandrovich Vlasov, a brilliant lecturer and a remarkable physicist with a tragic (in my opinion) scientific fate. Vlasov and introduced me to Landau. It was in 1951 at the graduation party of our course. For some reason, I defiantly did not go to the solemn presentation of diplomas, which took place in the so-called Big Communist Auditorium of the old building of Moscow State University on Mokhovaya. Walking along the balustrade near this audience, I met Vlasov, who also did not go to the solemn act. We stood with him and my classmate Kolya Chetverikov, when Vlasov exclaimed: “Lev Davidovich himself is climbing the stairs! Come, I'll introduce you." It turned out that a group of students who were doing their diploma work at the Institute of Physical Problems invited Landau to our graduation party, and he came. Vlasov brought Kolya and me to him and introduced: "Our theorists."

According to the distribution, I was sent as a teacher of the hydrolysis technical school in the city of Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory. But they refused me. Vlasov made many attempts to get me somewhere for scientific work, but everything was in vain because of my profile (5th point plus repressed parents). In the end, I received a referral to a rural school in the Kaluga region, 105 km from Moscow. Proximity to Moscow left me hope for the continuation of scientific work with Vlasov. But he resolutely stated: "I think it's better for you to try to get started with Landau." Subsequently, I was very grateful to Vlasov for this advice, which, as I now understand, was given by him because of his good attitude towards me.

In the autumn of 1951, when I started working at a rural school, my close friend from the university, Sergei Repin, visited me. He was the fiancé of Natalya Talnikova, who lived in the apartment next to Landau. “You should take Landau's exams,” he said, “here is his phone number. Call him". With great hesitation, having prepared for the first exam (which, as I thought, would be "Mechanics"), I called Landau, introduced myself and said that I would like to take the theoretical minimum. He agreed and made an appointment, asking if it was right for me.

At the appointed hour, after taking time off from school, I rang Landau's doorbell. It was opened to me by a very beautiful woman, as I understand it, Landau's wife. She greeted me cordially, saying that Lev Davidovich would come soon, and took me to the 2nd floor to a small room, which I will always remember. After waiting fifteen minutes, I noticed, to my horror, that a puddle of my boots had flowed onto the shiny parquet floor. While I was trying to wipe it with my papers, voices were heard below. “Daulenka, why are you late? The boy has been waiting for you for a long time, ”I heard a female voice and some explanations that a male voice gave. Going upstairs, Lev Davidovich apologized for being late and said that the first exam should be mathematics. I did not specially prepare for it, but since it was delivered very well at the physics department (unlike physics), I said that I could take mathematics right away.

To some extent, it was even good that I did not prepare for mathematics, since I easily took the integral proposed by Landau without using Euler substitutions (for using them in simple examples, as I found out, Lev Davidovich drove me out of the exam). After I solved all the problems, he said: "Okay, now prepare the mechanics." “And I just came to hand it over,” I said. Landau began to offer me problems in mechanics. It must be said that it was easy to take Landau's exams. I was encouraged by his friendly attitude and, I would say, sympathy for the examiner. Having given the next task, he usually left the room and, occasionally going in and looking at the papers covered by the examinees, he said: “So, so, you are doing everything right. Finish soon." Or: “You are doing something wrong, you have to do everything according to science.” I was the last person he took all nine exams from. L. P. Pitaevsky, who passed the theoretical minimum after me, had only two: the first one in mathematics, and the second one in quantum mechanics. The rest Pitaevsky handed over to E. M. Lifshitz. Lev Petrovich said that Lifshitz was usually interested only in the final answer, checking its correctness.

Having successfully passed the “mechanics”, I told Lev Davidovich (not without timidity) that I noticed quite a few typos in his book. He was not at all offended, on the contrary, thanked me and noted in his notebook those of the typos I found that had not been noticed before. Only after all this did he begin to ask me who I had previously studied at Moscow State University with. I was waiting for this question and was ready to defend Vlasov in case Landau spoke badly about him. To my surprise and joy, he said: “Well, Vlasov is perhaps the only one in the physics department with whom you can deal. True,” he added, “Vlasov’s latest idea of ​​a single-particle crystal is, in my opinion, of purely clinical interest.” This was hard to answer. At the beginning of 1953, I passed all the theoretical minimum exams, and Lev Davidovich recommended me to Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, saying to me then the phrase, which many later quoted: “I don’t know anyone except Zeldovich who would have so many new ideas, except perhaps at Fermi.

In August 1954, having finally completed my term, I was able to leave school and came to Moscow to get a job at some scientific institution or university. But the Stalinist order was still preserved in many respects. They didn't take me anywhere, despite the brilliant testimonial signed by Landau and Zel'dovich. After several months without work, I began to despair. I was saved from this by the care on the part of Lev Davidovich and Yakov Borisovich and the support of fellow students: the family of V.V. Sudakov and the family of A.A. Logunov.

I began to think about leaving Moscow. But at the beginning of 1955, Landau told me: “Be patient. There is talk about the return of P. L. Kapitsa. I can then take you to graduate school. Indeed, in the spring of 1955, Pyotr Leonidovich again became the director of the Institute of Physical Problems, and after a demonstrative examination arranged for me by Kapitsa, I was admitted to graduate school. Landau appointed A. A. Abrikosov as my leader, with whom we became friends. True, I was not very attracted by the proposed problem: determining the shape and size of superconducting regions in the intermediate state in a current-carrying conductor. I was attracted to particle physics. The discovery of parity nonconservation and muon catalysis enabled me to address these issues. Since Landau himself took up problems of the weak interaction, he became my direct supervisor and instructed me to clarify certain issues. For example, he immediately asked to check the degree of polarization of electrons in β-decay.

Then it was believed that the β-interaction is a combination of scalar, pseudoscalar and tensor variants, symmetrical with respect to the permutation of particles, and the helicity of the neutrino was unknown. For definiteness, Landau considered her to be right. I received confirmation that electrons in β-decay will be polarized in the direction of their momentum (in the case of the right neutrino) with the value +v/c(the ratio of the speed of an electron to the speed of light). It seemed to me an intriguing circumstance that the electron and proton participated in the β-interaction only with their left components, and the neutrino and neutron with their right ones. Landau also found this interesting. But we didn't go further. Lev Davidovich instructed me to advise on the theory of experimenters from the present Kurchatov Center, who were preparing to measure the polarization of electrons, and I had the pleasure of discussing questions with one of our best experimenters, P. E. Spivak.

I remember the next episode from that time. Having put forward the longitudinal neutrino hypothesis, Landau immediately wanted to point out its consequences. He asked me if I had ever counted muon decay. “How did you integrate over phase space? In elliptical coordinates? “Yes, in ellipticals,” I replied. Lev Davidovich said nothing. He apparently did not know about the invariant calculation technique, but he felt that old technology bulky and not very pretty. Therefore, in his article, he gave only the result, without giving the calculations themselves. It seems to me that in many other cases the general approach to solving various problems, which Landau was so famous for, arose in him as a result of long and painstaking work, which he kept silent about.

Landau's seminars are mentioned in many memoirs. I will only talk about two that I remember. My mathematician friend once mentioned that I. M. Gelfand decided to study quantum field theory, because, in his opinion, all the difficulties in it arise from the fact that physicists do not know mathematics well. After a while my friend said: "Gelfand did everything." "What did he do?" I asked. "Everything," replied the mathematician. This rumor spread widely, and Israel Moiseevich was invited to make a presentation at Landau's seminar.

Gelfand made an unprecedented trick - he was 20 minutes late. Another speaker was already speaking at the blackboard. But Lev Davidovich asked him to give way to Gelfand. Contrary to custom, Landau did not allow Abrikosov and Khalatnikov to make objections in the course of the report, but arranged a literal rout after it was over. It was said that after the seminar, Israel Moiseevich said that theoretical physicists are far from being as simple as he thought, and that theoretical physics is very close to mathematics, so he will do something else, say, biology.

Subsequently, when Lev Davidovich was lying at the Institute of Neurosurgery after the accident, it turned out that Gelfand was working there. "What is he doing here?" one of the physicists asked the head doctor Yegorov. “You better ask him yourself,” he replied.

Another, truly historic, was the seminar at which N. N. Bogolyubov talked about his explanation of superconductivity. The first hour passed quite tensely. Landau could not understand the physical meaning of the mathematical transformations made by Nikolai Nikolaevich. However, during the break, when Bogolyubov and Landau, walking along the corridor, continued their conversation, Nikolai Nikolayevich told Lev Davidovich about the Cooper effect (pairing of two electrons near the Fermi surface), and Landau immediately understood everything. The second hour of the seminar passed, as they say, with a bang. Landau was full of praise for the work done, which was completely unusual for him. In turn, Nikolai Nikolaevich praised the ratio, which Lev Davidovich wrote on the blackboard, and advised him to publish it without fail. We agreed on a joint seminar.

I was glad of the cooperation that arose, because I did not understand (and still do not understand) why Landau was wary of Bogolyubov. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Nikolai Nikolaevich maintained relations with people whom Lev Davidovich did not respect and did not like: “Why did he leave D. D. Ivanenko and A. A. Sokolov in his department?” But perhaps this was due to the fact that the Department of Science of the Central Committee patronized the Bogolyubov school, and accused Landau and his school of many sins. Tensions in relations were also introduced by some members of both schools, who tried to be more royalists than the king himself. Since there were friends of mine among Bogolyubov's students who talked about him, I tried to convince Dau that Bogolyubov, by his nature, could not, in principle, plot anything bad either against him personally or against anyone else. But a large article by Academician I. M. Vinogradov appeared in Pravda. It said that the mathematician N. N. Bogolyubov solved problems that theoretical physicists could not solve by explaining superfluidity and superconductivity (moreover, Landau's name was not even mentioned in connection with superfluidity). The joint work of the two schools did not work out.

Landau had a completely uncompromising attitude towards works and judgments that seemed to him wrong. And he openly and rather sharply expressed it, regardless of the faces. Thus, the Nobel laureate V. Raman was enraged by Landau's remarks, which he made at his report, which took place at the Kapitsa seminar, and literally pushed Landau out of the seminar.

I knew only one case when Lev Davidovich refrained from criticizing incorrect work. This happened when NA Kozyrev was to speak at Kapitsa's seminar with his wild hypothesis about energy and time. Landau knew that Kozyrev, who began his career as a talented astrophysicist, then spent many years in the camp, and felt sorry for him, but he could not hear nonsense. Therefore, contrary to his custom, he simply did not go to the seminar. I heard that at one time he did not go to the lecture of his close friend Yu. B. Rumer, arranged by physicists in order to apply for permission for him to live and work in Moscow. Rumer was deprived of this right after many years of imprisonment, spent in a "sharashka" together with A. N. Tupolev and S. P. Korolev, and then in exile. Landau's support could have been significant. But Landau did not believe in the idea developed by Rumer, and he organically could not tell a lie.

Lev Davidovich also had erroneous assessments. At Bogolyubov's report, he criticized his work on a weakly nonideal Bose gas, i.e., a work that he later considered an outstanding achievement. In my memory, he criticized the report of the remarkable physicist F. L. Shapiro (who supplemented, based on his experimental data, the theory of the effective radius), but then, having convinced himself of the correctness of the result, he apologized to him and inserted this result into his course "Quantum Mechanics".

A critical mindset sometimes prevented Landau from accepting new ideas until he fully understood their physical basis. So it was, for example, with nuclear shells and the latest development of quantum electrodynamics. I remember such an episode. In the summer of 1961 I came to Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich to discuss the problem of the second (muon) neutrino. New evidence has been accumulating in favor of this hypothesis. "Let's go to Dow," Zel'dovich said after our discussion. We found him in the garden of Physical Problems. He said he was enjoying a warm day. Apparently, at that moment he did not really want to talk about science. “It is impossible to accurately calculate the processes that speak in favor of two different neutrinos. And why multiply the number of elementary particles, there are already plenty of them, ”Dau said, brushing aside all our objections. “It is a pity that you did not express these considerations in 1947. This would greatly help the Alikhanov brothers,” Yakov Borisovich joked. (The Alikhanov brothers "discovered", thanks to errors in the experimental technique, a large number of unstable particles - "varitrons", for which they received the Stalin Prize in 1947.) Dau did not answer this joke. “And why did Dau believe the Alikhanovs?” I asked Yakov Borisovich when we were alone. “Dau was distrustful of the meson theory of nuclear forces,” he explained, “almost nothing in it can be accurately calculated, and here Ivanenko advertises it in every possible way. And since it turned out that there are many mesons - varitrons, then, - Dau decided, - they have nothing to do with nuclear forces.

Of all the modern great physicists, Lev Davidovich most of all reminded me of Richard Feynman. Subsequently, I was able to verify this. In 1972, at a conference on weak interactions held in Hungary, V. Telegdy introduced me to Feynman, who gave the famous report "Quarks as Partons" there. After one of the lectures, in which I made a remark about the possibility of the existence of a third lepton (in addition to the electron and muon) and its properties, Feynman came up to me and said that he believed in the existence of a third lepton. He also asked me what I am doing now. I told him about the problem of supercritical nuclei, which Zel'dovich and I had dealt with several years ago and which Yakov Borisovich and VS Popov from ITEP finally solved. Feynman became interested in this, and we talked with him in the lobby of the restaurant after lunch until dinner. He even wrote down the problem Z > 137 on a special card he took out of his purse. During the discussion, he reminded me very much of Dow. I told him about it. "Oh, that's a big compliment for me," he replied.

Feynman greatly appreciated Landau. I remember in my graduate school talking about a letter Feynman wrote to him. In this letter, he admitted that, when he began to study superfluidity, he did not believe in some of Landau's results, but the more he delved into this problem, the more he became convinced of the correctness of his intuition. In this regard, Feynman asked Landau what he thought about the situation in quantum field theory. Dau wrote about the null charge in his answer. Feynman also reminded me of Landau in terms of his style of behavior. It seems to me that with him, like with Lev Davidovich, outrageousness was a means of overcoming natural shyness.

I was glad to learn that V. L. Ginzburg also found their similarities. However, I completely disagree with Vitaly Lazarevich's opinion that Landau did not have warm friendly feelings for anyone. “For some reason, I think, although I’m not sure about it, that Landau usually didn’t have such feelings at all,” recalls Ginzburg. It is possible that Vitaly Lazarevich did not observe anything of the kind. But his colleague and friend E. L. Feinberg was touched by the manifestation of these feelings on the part of Landau towards Rumer and quotes the words of Kapitsa: “Those who knew Landau closely knew that behind this sharpness in judgments, in essence, a very kind and sympathetic person. And how could a callous person who does not have warm feelings for anyone find such poignant words to begin his article: “It is with deep sadness that I send this article, written in honor of the sixtieth birthday of Wolfgang Pauli, to a collection dedicated to his memory. Memories of him will be sacredly kept by those who had the good fortune to know him personally. Many could not fail to notice with what warmth Landau treated, for example, I. Ya. Pomeranchuk, N. Bohr, whom he revered as his teacher, and a friend of his youth, R. Peierls.

I felt Dau's sympathy and support in the most difficult moments of my life: both when I worked in a rural school, unable to do science, and when I could not get a job, returning to Moscow, and later, in the fall of 1961, when wife, leaving me, at my request, our three-year-old son. Dow, who was always interested in the family life of his friends and students, was distressed by this. He asked how I cope with the child. I explained that my son has a nanny, and according to his own theory, we solve the situation that has arisen as intelligent people. But this, apparently, did not calm him down, and he began to pay special attention to me.

I usually tried to come to Kapitza's seminar on Wednesday so that I could attend the theoretical seminar the next morning. Dau began to invite me to dinner after Kapitza's seminar. Before that, I rarely visited his house. We talked about science and about life. I remember that Kora was worried because Kapitsa wanted to write a letter to Khrushchev in connection with the fact that Landau was not allowed to attend international conferences. “He can write such things,” she said. “He wrote a letter to Stalin complaining about Beria!” Dau argued with her and praised Pyotr Leonidovich in every possible way. On Wednesday, January 3, 1962, Yu. D. Prokoshkin and I were invited to make a report at Kapitza's seminar on the direction of research, which was later called "meson chemistry." We were second. The famous Linus Pauling, twice Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and for peace, spoke at the first hour.

After the seminar, Kapitsa, as usual, invited the speakers and closest collaborators to his office for tea. He entertained the guest with conversations about politics: about de Gaulle, about Churchill's scientific advisers, about the Swedish king, etc. At some point, Dow got up from the table, went to the door and beckoned me with his finger. We went to the reception. "Well, how are you doing?" Dow asked. “It's all right,” I answered, “come to Dubna. Now they are preparing some interesting experiments. A lot of people will be very interested in talking to you.” "Well, I'm heavy on my feet and lazy," Dow said. And we returned to the office of Peter Leonidovich.

However, a day later, my classmate, the wife of my friend, one of the most talented young students of Landau, Vladimir Vasilyevich Sudakov, called me in Dubna: “Dau was in TTL and came to us,” she said. “He said that you called him to Dubna, and he decided to go with us.” At first they planned to go by train, but then Dau was embarrassed that I live quite far from the station, and they decided to go by car (not knowing that I was going to meet them at the station in an institute car). I was expecting them on Sunday, January 7, and even, using the advice of my cottage neighbor S.M. Shapiro, cooked dinner.

Around one o'clock I began to worry. It was windy outside, there was snow and ice. I went to the neighboring cottage to A. A. Logunov, who had a direct telephone line to Moscow, and called Dau's home. It was busy there. Then I called Abrikosov. He didn't know anything. My excitement intensified, and I began to continuously dial Dow's number. At some point, he was released, and Cora said: “Dau is in the hospital, near death. I can not talk. Waiting for a call" and hung up. I immediately reported this to Abrikosov, realizing that he would do everything possible to help Dow. Contacting Abrikosov again and learning that there had been a car accident and Dau was in the 50th hospital, I rushed to Moscow.

There were already several invited highly qualified doctors in the hospital, who were found on Sunday by the attending physician Dau (I think Karmazin). Fortunately, Sudakov knew his phone number and informed him about the disaster. They provided Dow with urgent assistance. In the hospital waiting room, I learned about the terrible injuries received by Dau. The next morning, the hospital was filled with an unusually quiet crowd of physicists who had learned about the catastrophe. The Kremlin doctors arrived, and the first thing they did was to write a protocol on the incompatibility of the injuries received with life. Much has been written about Landau's illness and the efforts made to save him. I won't touch on this. I remember the unity of physicists, which involved many people who did not know Dau. It was a moment of truth that revealed the inner essence of various people.

I want to write only about what I saw after Landau was discharged from the academic hospital. In the summer he was taken to a dacha in Mozzhinka. Not knowing about his condition, I went there. Dow was cared for by Cora's sister. She said that Dow, realizing his position, is desperate that he will not be able to work as before. He does not sleep and says that he has become such a nonentity that he cannot even commit suicide. I involuntarily recalled the lines of one of N. Gumilyov's favorite Dau poems: "Neither the gleam of a gun, nor the splash of a wave is now free to break this chain."

In the future, Dow's life passed mainly between home and the academic hospital. People who came to him tried to tell him the news of physics, not realizing that he could not concentrate as before, and this caused him torment. But he remembered the old things very well. It is said that he lost his working memory. But this is not entirely true. He did not lose his working memory, nor did he lose his sense of humor, despite the pain.

Once, after returning from a trip to the mountains, I came to visit Dow at the academic hospital, without having shaved off the beard that I let go in the mountains. And Dau did not like people with a beard: "Why wear your stupidity on your face." Seeing me, he asked: “Really, Sema, have you signed up for castrati?” "What do you mean, Dow?" “And the fact that you became a follower of Fidel Castro,” he said. When the next day, having shaved, I went to see him, at the gate to the hospital garden I ran into E. M. Lifshitz and V. Weiskopf, whom Yevgeny Mikhailovich had brought to visit Dau. It turns out that Dau told them: “Yesterday Semyon came to me with a disgusting beard. I told him to shave it off immediately." Together we were glad that Dau also had RAM.

Time passed, and many of those who selflessly saved Lev Davidovich began to forget about him. Once, when I visited him in the hospital, I found him walking around the hospital yard with Irakli Andronikov, who was also recovering in the hospital and with whom Landau was friends. Nurse Tanya followed behind them. She told me that now almost no one goes to Dow, and this makes him very sad. One Alyosha (Aprikosov) appears regularly. I tried to entertain Dow with different funny stories. Then I made a mistake when I said that the theorists of Physical Problems wanted to organize a special theoretical institute in Chernogolovka. "What for? Dow said. “Theorists should work side by side with experimenters.” (Subsequently, I read that Landau himself and Georgy Gamow tried to organize the Institute of Theoretical Physics. Apparently, Dau did not want to separate theorists from the Institute of Physical Problems, being grateful to Kapitsa.)

From the hospital, I immediately went to the Institute of Physical Problems and reproached my friends for not visiting the patient. Typical response: "It's unbearable for me to see a teacher in this state." I couldn’t understand it: “And if, say, your father was in such a state, you couldn’t see him either?” Khalatnikov reproached me for telling Dow about Chernogolovka: "We tried not to tell him about it." By the way, the Institute for Theoretical Physics, organized by Landau's students, has become one of the world's best centers and deservedly bears the name of Landau. On this occasion, I had the opportunity to somehow joke. The fact is that when Khalatnikov and Abrikosov “punched” one of their articles through Dau, he wrapped it up several times and, going into our graduate student room, repeated: “After my death, Apricot and Khalat will create world center pathology." Therefore, when Isaac Markovich told me that the organizers managed to name the Institute after Landau, I replied: “Dau predicted many times that you and Alyosha would organize such a center, but what he didn’t think of (even though he could) is that This center will be named after him!

Landau's sixtieth birthday was approaching. Concerned about this, I called AB Migdal, who had a wonderful 50th birthday celebration. “There is no need to arrange anything,” he said, “Dau is now in a bad state.”

On January 22, 1968, Karen Avetovich Ter-Martirosyan, Vladimir Naumovich Gribov, and I met at the Institute of Physical Problems and, after some hesitation, decided to go to Landau's house to congratulate him on his 60th birthday. He was alone with Cora. It seemed to me that he was delighted with our arrival. We sat at the table with him and Cora for a long time, drinking tea with homemade cakes and talking about some common topics. Dow looked calm and sad, occasionally smiling. One of his last family photographs, shown here, conveys his appearance well. A. K. Kikoin, his friend from the time of his work in Kharkov, and brother of I. K. Kikoin, came to congratulate Dau. The famous physician and wonderful person A. A. Vishnevsky, majestic in his general's overcoat, came in, who was of great help in the treatment of Landau. And we all sat and could not leave. They said goodbye only at six o'clock, when Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa came with his wife Anna Alekseevna. This is how Lev Davidovich met his sixtieth birthday.

When Khalatnikov, the director of the Landau Institute, returned from India, he arranged a celebration of Landau's anniversary at the IFP in March. There were a lot of people, Nobel laureates were present, Alexander Galich sang in the conference room (and then in Kapitsa's office). Dow sat with a detached look, smiling faintly at those congratulating him.

In less than a month he was gone.

Literature
1.Feoktistov L.P. A weapon that has exhausted itself. M., 1999.
2. History of the Soviet atomic project (ISAP). M., 1997.
3. Memories of L. D. Landau. M., 1988.
4. News of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 1991. No. 3.
5. Atomic project of the USSR. T. II. S. 529. M.; Sarov, 2000.
6. Ranyuk Yu. N. L. D. Landau and L. M. Pyatigorsky // VIET. 1999. No. 4.
7. Gorelik G. L."My anti-Soviet activity" // Priroda. 1991. No. 11.
8. Sonin A.S. Physical Idealism: The Story of an Ideological Campaign. M., 1994.
9. Historical archive. 1993. No. 3. pp. 151-161.

good overview can serve as the book of A. A. Abrikosov "Academician Landau" (M., 1965), as well as articles by E. M. Lifshitz in the "Collected Works of L. D. Landau" (M, 1969) and the book "Memoirs of L. D. Landau" (M, 1988).
A classical gas of free charge carriers should not have diamagnetism.
So called electric adding machines.

January 22 marks the 106th birthday of the theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize winner, founder of the scientific school and genius Lev Davidovich Landau. He devoted his life to science, and also developed a formula for an ideal marriage.

Theory and practice

The student Leo, who had already studied differential and integral calculus at the age of twelve, and graduated from school at thirteen, despite his amazing abilities and rare mind, was not given any experimental work. The "pure theorist" learned colossal amounts of information, but with difficulty applied them in practice. Classmates sincerely tried to help their friend, even ventured to go to the dean to find a way out of the situation - the brilliant young man could not pass the third laboratory work in a row. “Let him then take two mathematics courses for the Faculty of Mathematics instead,” the dean decided. Less than two weeks later, both courses were completed.

Weakness and Strength

In 1937, at the invitation of Kapitza, Landau headed the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. Less than a year later he was arrested and charged with spying for Germany. “I spent a year in prison, and it was clear that even for another six months I would not be enough: I was just dying,” the scientist later wrote. Kapitsa personally went to the Kremlin to petition for the release of Landau, declared that he would leave the newly created institute without a friend, and Professor Kitaigorodsky met Lev Davidovich at the door of the prison on the day of his release. Later, Alexander Isaakovich recalled: “Dau could not move independently, his complexion was bluish-pale. But Dau smiled, greeted and immediately boasted: “And I learned to count tensors in my mind.”

Friendship and Justice

The fateful time spent behind bars was the result of joint work with Leonid Pyatigorsky. Being a sufficiently qualified specialist, understanding the value of the book "Mechanics" created in collaboration with Landau and knowing that the name "enemy of the people" would certainly be removed from the title page, Pyatigorsky composed a denunciation of Landau, believing that the letter would not go beyond the NKVD. The investigator handed over the letter to the accused Dau immediately after his arrest. Subsequently, Pyatigorsky came to the liberated Landau for forgiveness, but Lev Davidovich did not shake hands former colleague. He did not like to return to the sad episode in the future, strictly following the rule set for himself at the age of fourteen: "do not return, either in conversations or in thoughts, to what turned out to be unworthy of the attention of a self-respecting person."

Humor and seriousness

It would seem that what could be more serious than studying the physical sciences at the academic level? Nevertheless, Landau is well-known as a joker and inventor, including in the field of scientific humor. He himself owns the term "so says Landau", as well as the statement "sciences are natural, unnatural and unnatural." Now the followers of the theoretical physicist compose jokes in his honor. Once, while working on the next volume, out of breath, Lifshitz ran into the MIPT department and announced to Landau: “Lev Davidovich, on the way here, I lost half of the proof sheets from our new book!” To which Landau calmly replies, "But why are you so worried, Evgeny Mikhailovich? Let's write as always:" OBVIOUSLY.

Fantasies and reality

In Berlin, in 1929, Landau met Rumer. They sat together at a colloquium attended by Einstein. Dau said, "I'll go downstairs and try to talk Einstein out of unified field theory." Landau, according to him, after the seminar tried to "explain" quantum mechanics to Einstein, but to no avail. Rumer himself describes this moment as follows: “I know more about him than others. I know for sure that Landau never visited Einstein! Contrary to legend, he never met Einstein!” But Ginzburg willingly argued with this statement: "This is not true, because Landau himself told what he met." Probably, Lev Davidovich tried so hard to convince others of what had happened that in the end he convinced himself.

Love and freedom

Konkordia Terentievna Landau, the wife of a brilliant physicist, began writing her memoirs after her husband's death in 1968 and worked on them for more than ten years. Interesting details of his personal life were revealed in Cora's memoirs. The theoretical physicist has developed, in his opinion, the ideal marriage formula - spouses love each other, but this does not prevent them from having other partners. According to Lev Davidovich, “you need to live interestingly, brightly,” and “jealousy is a relic, jealousy should be alien to a cultured person.” Landau's wife accepted the proposed system and was forced to pretend that she was not upset by her husband's next date on the side, - “Korusha, Hera will come to me today at six o'clock. Please leave the house or sit quietly. I told her that you were at the dacha.

Shyness and demanding

B. L. Ioffe, author of the book “Without retouching. Portraits of Physicists Against the Background of the Epoch" recalls that Landau was faithful to science and eager to bring his students to the forefront of theoretical physics. Dau said about himself: “But I’m not like that, I’m different, I’m all from sparkles and minutes!”, And this discouraging immediacy coexisted in him with shyness in society and selflessness at work. Demanding to others, to achieve high results, contradicted Landau's relatively modest self-esteem. He considered himself a second-class physicist and clearly distinguished between problems that he could and could not solve. A typical Landau aphorism: "How can you solve a problem, the answer to which you do not know in advance?". According to Kapitsa, shyness disappeared with age, but Landau never developed the ability to adapt to society.

Lev Davidovich Landau(often referred to by fellow physicists Dow ; January 9 (22), 1908, Baku - April 1, 1968, Moscow) - theoretical physicist, founder of a scientific school, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (elected in 1946).

• three Stalin (State) Prizes (1946, 1949, 1953),
• Hero of Socialist Labor (1954).
• medals named after Max Planck (1960),
• Fritz London Prize (1960),
• Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962.
• Lenin Prize (1962)

Brief chronology of life and work

• 1916-1920 - studying at the gymnasium
• 1920-1922 - studies at the Baku Economic College.
• 1922-1924 - studies at the Azerbaijan State University.
• 1924 - transfer to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Leningrad State University.
• 1926 - admission to the supernumerary graduate school of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology. Participation in the V Congress of Russian Physicists in Moscow (December 15-20). Publication of Landau's first scientific work "On the theory of spectra of diatomic molecules".
• 1927 - graduated from the university (January 20) and entered the graduate school of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology. In work "The problem of braking by radiation" to describe the state of systems for the first time introduces a new concept into quantum mechanics - the density matrix.
• 1929 - year and a half scientific trip to continue education in Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Zurich. Publication of a work on diamagnetism, which put him on a par with the world's leading physicists.
• March 1931 - return home and work in Leningrad.
• August 1932 - transfer to Kharkov as head of the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (UFTI).
• 1932-1936 - appointment as head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Kharkov Mechanical Engineering Institute (now the National Technical University "Kharkov Polytechnic Institute"). Reading a course of lectures at the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics.
• 1934 - L. D. Landau was awarded the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences without defending a dissertation. Conference on Theoretical Physics in Kharkov. Trip to Bohr's seminar in Copenhagen (May 1-22). Creation of a theoretical minimum - a special program for training young physicists.
• 1935 - reading a course in physics at Kharkov State University, head of the department of general physics of Kharkov State University. Assignment of the title of professor.
• 1936-1937 - creation of the theory of phase transitions of the second kind and the theory of the intermediate state of superconductors.
• 1937 - transfer to work at the Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow (February 8). Appointment as head of the theoretical department of the IFP.
• April 27, 1938 - arrest.
• April 29, 1939 - release from prison thanks to the intervention of P. L. Kapitsa.
• 1940-1941 - creation of the theory of superfluidity of liquid helium.
• 1941 - creation of the theory of quantum fluid.
• 1943 - awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.
• 1945 - awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
• November 30, 1946 - elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Awarding the Stalin Prize.
• 1946 - Creation of the theory of electron plasma oscillations ("Landau damping").
• 1948 - publication of the "Course of lectures on general physics".
• 1949 - Awarded the Stalin Prize, awarded the Order of Lenin.
• 1950 - construction of the theory of superconductivity (together with V. L. Ginzburg).
• 1951 - Elected a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences.
• 1953 - awarding the Stalin Prize.
• 1954 - Awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Publication (together with A. A. Abrikosov, I. M. Khalatnikov) of a fundamental work "Fundamentals of Electrodynamics".
• 1955 - edition "Lectures on the theory of the atomic nucleus"(together with Ya. A. Smorodinsky).
• 1956 - elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands.
• 1957 - Creation of the Fermi liquid theory.
• 1959 - L. D. Landau proposes the principle of combined parity.
• 1960 - elected a member of the British Physical Society, the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Sciences and Arts. Fritz London Award. Rewarding with the Max Planck medal (Germany).
• 1962 - car accident on the way to Dubna (January 7). Lenin Prize for a cycle of books on theoretical physics (together with E. M. Lifshitz) (April). Nobel Prize in Physics "for his pioneering work in the theory of condensed matter, especially liquid helium". Awarded 1 November 1962. The Nobel Prize medal, diploma and check were presented to Landau on December 10 (for the first time in the history of the Nobel Prizes, the awarding took place in a hospital). Awarded the Order of Lenin.
• April 1, 1968 - died a few days after the operation.

Foreign member:

• Royal Society of London (1960),
• US National Academy of Sciences (1960),
• Royal Danish Academy of Sciences (1951),
• Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands (1956),
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960),
• French Physical Society and
• London Physical Society.

Landau created a numerous school of theoretical physicists. Among his students are

• E. M. Lifshits,
• A. A. Abrikosov,
• L. P. Gorkov,
• I. E. Dzyaloshinsky,
• I. M. Lifshitz,
• I. Ya. Pomeranchuk,
• I. M. Khalatnikov,
• A. F. Andreev,
• A. I. Akhiezer,
• V. B. Berestetsky,
• S. S. Gershtein,
• B. L. Ioffe,
• Yu. M. Kagan,
• V. G. Levich,
• L. A. Maksimov,
• A. B. Migdal,
• L. P. Pitaevsky,
• L. M. Pyatigorsky,
• R. Z. Sagdeev,
• Ya. A. Smorodinsky,
• K. A. Ter-Martirosyan,
• Laszlo Tisza and others.

The Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences is named after Landau.

Lev Davidovich Landau was born on January 22, 1908 in Baku, into a Jewish family of oil engineer David Lvovich Landau and his wife, doctor Lyubov Veniaminovna Garkavi-Landau. Lyubov Veniaminovna Garkavi-Landau (1876-1941) was a graduate of the Mogilev Women's Gymnasium, the Eleninsky Midwifery Institute and the Women's Medical Institute in St. Petersburg.

After her marriage in 1905, she worked as an obstetrician in Balkhany, a school doctor at the Baku Women's Gymnasium, published scientific works on experimental pharmacology ("Die Phasenwirkung des Digitalis auf das isolierte Herz", 1925; "On the immunity of a toad to its own poison", 1930) and "A Concise Guide to Experimental Pharmacology" (1927). David Lvovich Landau (1866-1943) also came from Mogilev; graduated with a gold medal (1884) from the Mogilev gymnasium and worked as an engineer at The Caspian-Black Sea Joint-Stock Company in Balkhany and later in Baku, and in the 1920s as a process engineer at Azneft; published scientific papers, including "Method of extinguishing a burning oil gusher" (Bulletin of the Society of Technologists, St. Petersburg, 1913) and "The Basic Law of Lifting a Liquid by a Passing Air (Gas)" (Journal of Technical Physics, vol. 6, issue 8, 1936 ).

Since 1916, L. D. Landau studied at the Baku Jewish Gymnasium, where his mother was a natural science teacher. Unusually gifted in mathematics, Landau jokingly said about himself: “I learned to integrate at the age of 13, but I always knew how to differentiate.”

At the age of fourteen he entered Baku University, where he studied simultaneously at two faculties: physics and mathematics and chemistry. For special successes, he was transferred to Leningrad University, settled with his paternal aunt, dentist Maria Lvovna Braude (1873-1970).

After graduating in 1927 from the Physics Department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Leningrad University, Landau became a graduate student, and later an employee of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology (whose director was A.F. Ioffe), in 1926-1927 he published the first works on theoretical physics.

In 1929 he was on a scientific mission to continue his education in Germany, in Denmark with Niels Bohr, in England and Switzerland. There he met with A. Einstein, worked together with leading theoretical physicists, including Niels Bohr, whom he considered his only teacher ever since. In 1929, Landau's father, David Lvovich, was briefly arrested on charges of sabotage and moved to Leningrad with his wife the following year.

In 1932 he headed the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkov. Since 1937 at the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Academician Landau is considered a legendary figure in the history of Russian and world science. Quantum mechanics, solid state physics, magnetism, low temperature physics, cosmic ray physics, hydrodynamics, quantum field theory, atomic nucleus physics and elementary particle physics, plasma physics - this is not a complete list of areas that attracted Landau's attention at different times. It was said about him that in "the huge building of physics of the 20th century there were no locked doors for him."

From 1932 to 1937 he worked at the UFTI, head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Kharkov Mechanical Engineering Institute (now the National Technical University "Kharkov Polytechnic Institute"). Reading a course of lectures at the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics; after his dismissal from Kharkov University and the strike of physicists that followed, Landau in February 1937 accepted the invitation of Peter Kapitsa to take the position of head of the theoretical department of the newly built Institute for Physical Problems (IFP) and moved to Moscow.

After Landau's departure, the authorities of the regional NKVD began to destroy the UPTI, foreign specialists A. Weisberg, F. Houtermans were arrested, in August-September 1937 the physicists L. V. Rozenkevich (Landau's co-author), L. V. Shubnikov, V. S. Gorsky (the so-called "UFTI case").

In April 1938, Landau in Moscow edits a leaflet written by M. A. Korets calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime, in which Stalin is called a fascist dictator. The text of the leaflet was handed over to the anti-Stalinist group of IFLI students for distribution by mail before the May Day holidays. This intention was revealed by the state security organs of the USSR, and Landau, Korets and Yu. B. Rumer were arrested on the morning of April 28 for anti-Soviet agitation.

On May 3, 1938, Landau was excluded from the list of employees of the IFP. Landau spent a year in prison and was released thanks to a letter in defense of Niels Bohr and the intervention of Kapitsa, who took Landau "on bail". Kapitsa wrote: “I ask you to release the arrested professor of physics Lev Davidovich Landau from custody under my personal guarantee. I vouch for the NKVD that Landau will not conduct any counter-revolutionary activities in my institute, and I will take all measures in my power to ensure that he does not conduct any counter-revolutionary work outside the institute. In the event that I notice any statements from Landau aimed at harming the Soviet government, I will immediately inform the NKVD authorities about this. Two days later, Landau was reinstated on the IFP staff list. After his release and until his death, Landau remained a member of the Institute for Physical Problems.

In 1955, he signed the "Letter of Three Hundred" (contained an assessment of the state of biology in the USSR by the mid-1950s and criticism of Lysenko and "Lysenkoism").

January 7, 1962, on the way from Moscow to Dubna on the Dmitrovsky highway, Landau got into a car accident. As a result of numerous fractures, hemorrhages and head injuries, he was in a coma for 59 days. Physicists from all over the world took part in saving Landau's life. A round-the-clock duty was organized in the hospital. The missing medicines were delivered by planes from Europe and the USA. As a result of these measures, Landau's life was saved, despite very serious injuries.

After the accident, Landau practically ceased to engage in scientific activities. However, according to his wife and son, Landau gradually returned to his normal state and in 1968 was close to resuming his studies in physics.

Landau died a few days after the operation to eliminate intestinal obstruction. Diagnosis - thrombosis of mesenteric vessels. Death occurred as a result of blockage of the artery by a detached thrombus. Landau's wife, in her memoirs, expressed doubts about the competence of some of the doctors who treated Landau, especially doctors from special clinics for the treatment of the USSR leadership.

Personal life and the theory of happiness

With his beloved teacher Niels Bohr at the "Archimedes Feast" on the steps of the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. 1961

As a child, fascinated by science, Landau made a vow to himself never "to smoke, drink or marry." Also, he believed that marriage is a cooperative that has nothing to do with love. However, he met a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry Concordia (Kora) Terentyevna Drobantseva, who divorced her first husband. She swore that she would not be jealous of other women, and from 1934 they lived together in an actual marriage. Landau believed that lies and jealousy destroy marriage most of all, and therefore they concluded “ marriage non-aggression pact"(as planned by Dow), which gave relative freedom to both spouses in the novels on the side. The official marriage was concluded between them on July 5, 1946, a few days before the birth of their son Igor. Igor Lvovich Landau graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, an experimental physicist in the field of low temperature physics (died on May 14, 2011, was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery).

Landau's only non-physical theory was the theory of happiness. He believed that every person should and even must be happy. To do this, he deduced a simple formula that contained three parameters: love, work and communication with people.

That's what Landau said

In addition to science, Landau is known as a joker. His contribution to scientific humor is quite large. Possessing a subtle, sharp mind and excellent eloquence, Landau encouraged humor in every possible way in his colleagues. He coined the term so said Landau, and also became the hero of various humorous stories. Characteristically, jokes are not necessarily related to physics and mathematics.

Landau had her own classification of women. According to Landau, girls are divided into beautiful, pretty and interesting. Pretty ones have slightly upturned noses, beautiful ones have straight noses, interesting ones have "terribly big" noses.

Classification of sciences: sciences are natural, unnatural and unnatural.

Landau School. theoretical minimum

Commemorative coin of the Bank of Russia dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of L. D. Landau

Landau created a numerous outstanding school of theoretical physicists. The physicists who were able to pass to Lev Davidovich (and later to his students) 9 theoretical exams, the so-called Landau theoretical minimum, were considered to be Landau's students for the most part. Mathematics was taken first, and then physics exams:

• two math exams
• Mechanics
• field theory
• quantum mechanics
• statistical physics
• Mechanics continuous media
• electrodynamics of continuous media
• quantum electrodynamics

Landau demanded from his students knowledge of the foundations of all branches of theoretical physics.

After the war, it was best to use Landau and Lifshitz's theoretical physics course to prepare for exams, but the first students took exams on Landau's lectures or on handwritten notes.

The first of those who passed the Landau theoretical minimum were:

• Alexander Solomonovich Kompaneets (1933)
• Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz (1934)
• Alexander Ilyich Akhiezer (1935)
• Isaac Yakovlevich Pomeranchuk (1935)
• Leonid Moiseevich Pyatigorsky (passed the theoretical minimum fifth, but not listed in the list provided by Landau)
• Laszlo Tissa (1935)
• Veniamin Grigorievich Levich

Other students:

• Vladimir Borisovich Berestetsky
• Yakov Abramovich Smorodinsky
• Isaac Markovich Khalatnikov
• Alexey Alekseevich Abrikosov
• Arkady Beinusovich Migdal
• Ilya Mikhailovich Lifshitz
• Karen Ter-Martirosyan
• Boris Lazarevich Ioffe
• Yuri Moiseevich Kagan
• Semyon Solomonovich Gershtein
• Lev Petrovich Gorkov
• Igor Ehielevich Dzyaloshinskiy
• Leonid Alexandrovich Maksimov
• Lev Petrovich Pitaevsky
• Roald Zinnurovich Sagdeev
• Alexander Fedorovich Andreev

Family

• Wife - Concordia Terentievna Drobantseva (among relatives - Bark, 1908-1984), author of memoirs of her husband. Her niece, the writer Maya Yakovlevna Bessarab, is the biographer of L. D. Landau.
  • Son - Igor Lvovich Landau (among relatives - Garik, 1946-2011), Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
• Sister - Sofya Davidovna Landau (1906-1971), was married to Zigush (Sigismund) Mironovich Broderzon (1903-1964), one of the founders of the TsKTI (Central Boiler and Turbine Institute named after I. I. Polzunov), brother of the famous Jewish avant-garde poet Moishe Broderson.
  • Her daughter (niece of L. D. Landau) is Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Ella Zigelevna Ryndina (born 1933), author of memoirs about the Landau family; worked as a researcher at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.

Memory

Landau L. D. on a stamp of Russia

• The Institute for Theoretical Physics is named after Landau.
• In 1972, the Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh discovered the asteroid 2142, which was named after him in honor of Lev Davidovich. Also on the Moon is the Landau crater, named after the scientist.
• Landauit (English) landauite) - a mineral from the krichtonite group, discovered in 1966, named after Landau.
• The L. D. Landau Gold Medal has been awarded since 1998 by the Department of Nuclear Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• In 2008, postage stamps of Russia and Azerbaijan were issued in honor of Landau.
• In 2008, commemorative coins dedicated to Lev Landau were issued: in Ukraine with a face value of two hryvnias, in Russia - with a face value of 2 rubles.

In art

• Feature film "I'm going into a thunderstorm" (1965). Under the name of Professor Dankevich (performed by R. Plyatt), L. D. Landau was bred.
• In 2008, the Ritm TV television company filmed the film My Husband is a Genius, which was criticized by people who knew Landau. In particular, academician V. L. Ginzburg called the film "simply disgusting, deceitful."
• Serial film "Dau" (2011).

Main works

• On the theory of spectra of diatomic molecules // Ztshr. Phys. 1926. Bd. 40. S. 621.
• The damping problem in wave mechanics // Ztshr. Phys. 1927. Bd. 45. S. 430.
• Quantum electrodynamics in configuration space // Ztshr. Phys. 1930. Bd. 62. S. 188. (Together with R. Peierls)
• Diamagnetism of metals // Ztshr. Phys. 1930. Bd. 64. S. 629.
• Extension of the uncertainty principle to relativistic quantum theory // Ztshr. Phys. 1931. Bd. 69. S. 56. (Together with R. Peierls).
• On the theory of energy transfer in collisions. I // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1932. Bd. 1. S. 88.
• On the theory of energy transfer in collisions. II // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1932. Bd. 2. S. 46.
• On the theory of stars // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1932. Bd. 1. S. 285.
• On the motion of electrons in a crystal lattice// Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1933. Bd. 3. S. 664.
• The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Universe // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1933. Bd. 4. S. 114. (Together with M. P. Bronshtein).
• Possible explanation of the dependence of the susceptibility on the field at low temperatures // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1933. Bd. 4. S. 675.
• Internal temperature of stars // Nature. 1933. V. 132. P. 567. (Together with G. A. Gamov)
• Structure of an unshifted scattering line, Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1934. Bd. 5. S. 172. (Together with G. Plachen.)
• On the theory of slowing down of fast electrons by radiation // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1934. Bd. 5. S. 761; ZhETF. 1935. V. 5. S. 255.
• On the formation of electrons and positrons in the collision of two particles // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1934. Bd. 6. S. 244. (Together with E. M. Lifshitz)
• On the theory of heat capacity anomalies // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 113.
• On the theory of dispersion of the magnetic permeability of ferromagnetic bodies // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 153. (Together with E. M. Lifshitz)
• On relativistic corrections to the Schrödinger equation in the many-body problem // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 487.
• On the theory of accommodation coefficient // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 489.
• On the theory of photoelectromotive force in semiconductors // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1936. Bd. 9. S. 477. (Together with E. M. Lifshitz)
• On the theory of sound dispersion // Phys. Ztshr. SOW. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 34. (With Edward Teller)
• On the theory of monomolecular reactions // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 67.
• Kinetic equation in the case of Coulomb interaction // ZhETF. 1937. T. 7. S. 203; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 154.
• On the properties of metals at very low temperatures // ZhETF. 1937. T. 7. S. 379; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 649. (Together with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk)
• Scattering of light by light // Nature. 1936. V. 138. R. 206. (Together with A. I. Akhiezer and I. Ya. Pomeranchuk)
• On the sources of stellar energy // DAN SSSR. 1937. T. 17. S. 301; Nature. 1938. V. 141. R. 333.
• On the absorption of sound in solids // Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1937. Bd. 11. S. 18. (Together with Yu. B. Rumer)
• On the theory of phase transitions. I // JETP. 1937. T. 7. S. 19; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1937. Bd. 7. S. 19.
• On the theory of phase transitions. II // ZhETF. 1937. T. 7. S. 627; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1937. Bd. 11. S. 545.
• On the theory of superconductivity // ZhETF. 1937. T. 7. S. 371; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1937. Bd. 7. S. 371.
• On the statistical theory of nuclei // ZhETF. 1937. T. 7. S. 819; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1937. Bd. 11. S. 556.
• Scattering of X-rays by crystals near the Curie point // ZhETF. 1937. Vol. 7. S. 1232; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1937. Bd. 12. S. 123.
• Scattering of x-rays by crystals with variable structure // ZhETF. 1937. Vol. 7. S. 1227; Phys. Ztshr. sow. 1937. Bd. 12. S. 579.
• Formation of showers by heavy particles // Nature. 1937. V. 140. P. 682. (Together with Yu. B. Rumer)
• Stability of neon and carbon with respect to a-decay // Phys. Rev. 1937. V. 52. P. 1251.
• Cascade theory of electron showers, Proc. Roy. soc. 1938. V. A166. P. 213. (Together with Yu. B. Rumer)
• On the de Haas-van Alphen effect, Proc. Roy. soc. 1939. V. A170. P. 363. Appendix to the article by D. Shen-Schenberg.
• On the polarization of electrons during scattering // DAN SSSR. 1940. T. 26. S. 436; Phys. Rev. 1940. V. 57. P. 548.
• On the "radius" of elementary particles // ZhETF. 1940. T. 10. S. 718; J Phys. USSR. 1940. V. 2. P. 485.
• On the scattering of mesotrons by "nuclear forces" // ZhETF. 1940. T. 10. S. 721; J Phys. USSR. 1940. V. 2. P. 483.
• Angular distribution of particles in showers // ZhETF. 1940. T. 10. S. 1007; J Phys. USSR. 1940. V. 3. P. 237.
• On the theory of secondary showers// ZhETF. 1941. T. 11. S. 32; J Phys. USSR. 1941. V. 4. P. 375.
• On the hydrodynamics of helium-II // ZhETF. 1944. T. 14. S. 112
• Theory of viscosity of helium-II // JETF. 1949. T. 19. S. 637
• On light scattering by mesotrons JETP 11, 35 (1941); J Phys. USSR 4, 455 (1941) (Together with Ya. A. Smorodinsky)
• Theory of superfluidity of helium II JETP 11, 592 (1941); J Phys. USSR 5, 71 (1941)
• Theory of stability of strongly charged lyophobic sols and adhesion of strongly charged particles in electrolyte solutions JETP 11, 802 (1941); 15, 663 (1945); Acta phys.-chim. USSR 14, 633 (1941) (with B. V. Deryagin)
• Entrainment of liquid by moving plate Acta phys.-chim. USSR 17, 42 (1942) (Together with V. G. Levich)
• On the Theory of the Intermediate State of Superconductors ZhETF 13, 377 (1943); J Phys. USSR 7, 99 (1943).
• On the relationship between liquid and gaseous states in metals Acta phys.-chim. USSR 18, 194 (1943) (Together with Ya. B. Zel'dovich)
• On a new exact solution of the Navier-Stokes equations DAN SSSR 43, 299 (1944)
• On the problem of turbulence DAN SSSR 44, 339 (1944)
• On the hydrodynamics of helium II. ZhETF 14, 112 (1944); J Phys. USSR 8, 1 (1944)
• On the theory of slow combustion. ZhETF 14, 240 (1944); Acta phys.-chim. USSR 19, 77 (1944)
• Scattering of protons by protons JETP 14, 269 (1944); J Phys. USSR 8, 154 (1944) (Together with Ya. A. Smorodinsky)
• On energy losses by fast particles for ionization. J Phys. USSR 8, 201 (1944)
• On the study of the detonation of condensed explosives DAN SSSR 46, 399 (1945) (Together with K. P. Stanyukovich)
• Determination of the outflow rate of detonation products of some gas mixtures. DAN SSSR 47, 205 (1945) (Together with K. P. Stanyukovich)
• Determination of the outflow velocity of detonation products of condensed explosives DAN SSSR 47, 273 (1945) (Together with K. P. Stanyukovich)
• On shock waves at long distances from their place of origin Prikl. Mathematics and Mechanics 9, 286 (1945); J Phys. USSR 9, 496 (1945)
• On Oscillations of an Electron Plasma JETP 16, 574 (1946); J Phys. USSR 10, 27 (1946)
• On the Thermodynamics of Photoluminescence J. Phys. USSR 10, 503 (1946)
• On the theory of helium superfluidity II J. Phys. USSR 11, 91 (1946)
• On the motion of foreign particles in helium II DAN SSSR 59, 669 (1948) Together with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk
• On the moment of a system of two photons DAN SSSR 60, 207 (1948)
• On the theory of superfluidity DAN SSSR 61, 253 (1948); Phys. Rev. 75, 884 (1949)
• Effective polaron mass JETP 18, 419 (1948) (Together with S. I. Pekar)
• Deuteron splitting in collisions with heavy nuclei JETP 18, 750 (1948) (Together with E. M. Lifshitz)
• Theory of Helium Viscosity II. 1. Collisions of elementary excitations in helium II JETP 19, 637 (1949) (With I. M. Khalatnikov)
• Theory of Helium Viscosity II. 2. Calculation of the viscosity coefficient JETP 19, 709 (1949) With (I. M. Khalatnikov)
• On the interaction between an electron and a positron JETP 19, 673 (1949) (Together with V. B. Berestetskii)
• On the equilibrium form of crystals // Collection dedicated to the seventieth anniversary of Academician A.F. Ioffe M.; Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 44 (1950)
• On the Theory of Superconductivity JETP 20, 1064 (1950) (Together with V. L. Ginzburg)
• On the multiple formation of particles in collisions of fast particles Izv. Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Ser. physical 17.51 ​​(1953)
• Limits of applicability of the theory of electron bremsstrahlung and pair formation at high energies DAN SSSR 92, 535 (1953)
• Electron-avalanche processes at superhigh energies DAN SSSR 92, 735 (1953) (Together with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk)
• Emission of gamma-quanta in collisions of fast pi-mesons with nucleons JETP 24, 505 (1953) Together with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk
• On the Elimination of Infinities in Quantum Electrodynamics Dokl.
• An asymptotic expression for the Green's function of an electron in quantum electrodynamics Dokl.
• Asymptotic expression for the Green's function of a photon in quantum electrodynamics Dokl.
• Electron mass in quantum electrodynamics DAN SSSR 96, 261 (1954)
• On anomalous absorption of sound near points of a second-order phase transition DAN SSSR 96, 469 (1954)
• Investigation of flow features using the Euler-Tricomi equation DAN SSSR 96, 725 (1954) (Together with E. M. Lifshitz)
• On quantum field theory. In the collection "Niels Bohr and the development of physics" London, 1955; M.; Foreign Publishing House lit., 1958
• On point interaction in quantum electrodynamics DAN SSSR 102, 489 (1955) (Together with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk)
• Gradient transformations of the Green's functions of charged particles JETP 29, 89 (1955) (Together with (I. M. Khalatnikov)
• Hydrodynamic Theory of Multiple Formation of Particles UFN 56, 309 (1955) (Together with S. Z. Belen'kii)
• On Quantum Field Theory Nuovo Cimento. Suppl. 3, 80 (1956) (Together with A. A. Abrikosov and I. M. Khalatnikov)
• Theory of a Fermi liquid JETP 30, 1058 (1956)
• Vibrations of a Fermi liquid JETP 32, 59 (1957)
• Conservation laws for weak interactions JETP 32, 405 (1957)
• On one possibility for the polarization properties of neutrinos JETP 32, 407 (1957)
• On hydrodynamic fluctuations (Together with E. M. Lifshitz) JETP 32, 618 (1957)
• Properties of the Green's function of particles in statistics JETP 34, 262 (1958)
• On the Theory of a Fermi Liquid JETP 35, 97 (1958)
• On the possibility of formulating the theory of strongly interacting fermions Phys. Rev. 111, 321 (1958) (With A. A. Abrikosov, A. D. Galanin, L. P. Gorkov, I. Ya. Pomeranchuk, and K. A. Ter-Martirosyan)
• Numerical methods for integrating partial differential equations by the grid method Tr. III All-Union. mat. Congress (Moscow, June-July 1956) M.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR 3, 92 (1958) (Together with N. N. Meiman and I. M. Khalatnikov)
• On Analytic Properties of Vertex Parts in Quantum Field Theory JETP 37, 62 (1959)
• Small binding energies in quantum field theory JETP 39, 1856 (1960)
• On the fundamental problems of Theoretical physics in the 20th century: A memorial volume to W.Pauli N.Y.; L.: Interscience (1960)
• Physics for everyone // M. Mir. 1979. (Together with A.I. Kitaygorodsky.)

see also

• Landau (crater)
• Theoretical Physics Course by Landau and Lifshitz
• Nobel laureates from Russia
• Ginzburg-Landau theory
• Landau levels
• Landau calibration
• Landau damping

Notes

Show compact

Vladimir Sychev. "Tao Landau" - "Science and Technologies of Russia" Ella Ryndina "Grandmother Lyubov Veniaminovna Garkavi-Landau" Landau-Garkavi Lyubov Veniaminovna - doctor L. Garcawy-Landau. Die Phasenwirkung des Digitalis auf das isolierte Herz. Archiv für experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie, 1925, 108: 3-4, pp 207-219. Graduates of the Mogilev Gymnasium E. Z. Ryndina “David Lvovich Landau” Ella Ryndina “Memoirs” Vorobyov V. V. Lev Landau and the “anti-Soviet strike of physicists” (published and translated from Ukrainian by Yu. N. Ranyuk) // VIET, 1999, no. 4, p. 92-101. The text of the leaflet G. Gorelik, Soviet life of Lev Landau. Moscow: Vagrius, 2008, 463 p., 61 illustrations. For a list of repressed members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, see P. L. Kapitsa, Letters on Science. M., 1989. S. 179 Announcement of the death of I.L. Landau on the website of the IFP Radio station "Echo of Moscow" / Programs / Well, it's a day / Tuesday, 01/22/2008 [Bessarab M. Lev Landau: [novel-biography]/Maya Bessarab. - St. Petersburg: Amphora. TID Amphora, 2013. - 318 p. - (Series "To People about People")] Bessarab M. Ya. "Thus spoke Landau." Vitaly Ginzburg. We were with Landau on "you" (Russian). Rossiyskaya Gazeta (November 20, 2008). - Why does the Nobel laureate consider the film "My Husband is a Genius" false. Retrieved March 20, 2011.

Literature

• Abrikosov, A. A. Academician L. D. Landau: short biography and review of scientific works. - M.: Nauka, 1965. - 46 p.: portr.
• Abrikosov, A. A., Khalatnikov, I. M. Academician L. D. Landau // Physics at school. - 1962. - N 1. - P. 21-27.
• Academician Lev Davidovich Landau: Collection. - M: Knowledge, 1978. - (New in life, science, technology. Ser. Physics; N 3).
• Academician Lev Davidovich Landau [on his fiftieth birthday] // Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. - 1958. - T.34. - P.3-6.
• Academician Lev Landau - Nobel Laureate [brief chronological review] // Science and Life. - 1963.- N 2. - S.18-19.
• Akhiezer, A. I. Lev Davidovich Landau // Ukrainian Journal of Physics. - 1969. - T.14, N 7. - S.1057-1059.
• Akhiezer, A. I. Lev Davidovich Landau (1908-1968). To the 90th birthday.
• Bessarab, M. Ya. Landau: Pages of life. - 2nd ed. - M.: Mosk.worker, 1978. - 232 p.: ill. (1st edition - 1971).
• Bessarab M. Ya. Landau: Pages of life / Foreword. K. A. Ter-Martirosyan .. - Ed. 3rd, add. - M.: Moskovsky worker, 1988. - 288, p. - (Creators of science and technology). - 50,000 copies. - ISBN 5-239-00143-X (Reg.)
• Bessarab, M. Ya. Landau's Formula of Happiness (Portraits). - M.: Terra-book. club, 1999. - 303 s - Bibliography: S.298-302.
• Bessarab, M. Ya. So spoke Landau. - M.: Fizmatlit. 2004. - 128 p.
• Boyarintsev, V.I. Jewish and Russian scientists. Myths and reality. - M.: FERI-V, 2001. - 172 p.
• Vasiltsova, Z. Pedagogy of creativity [about L. D. Landau] // Young Communist. - 1971. - N 5. - S.88-91.
• Memories of L. D. Landau / Ed. ed. I. M. Khalatnikov. - M.: Nauka, 1988. - 352 p.: ill.
• Around Landau (electronic collections) / IIET RAN, 2008
• Ginzburg, V. L. Lev Landau - Teacher and scientist // Moskovsky Komsomolets. - 1968. - January 18.
• Ginzburg, V. L. Lev Davidovich Landau // Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk. - 1968. - T.94, N 1. - S.181-184.
• Golovanov, Ya. Life among formulas. Academician L. D. Landau is 60 // Komsomolskaya Pravda. - 1968. - January 23.
• Gorelik G. E. Soviet life of Lev Landau. Moscow: Vagrius, 2008, 463 p., 61 illustrations.
• Gorobets, B. S. Krug Landau // Network almanac "Jewish antiquity", 2006-2007.
• Gorobets B.S. Krug Landau: Physics of war and peace. URSS, 2009. 272 ​​p. ISBN 978-5-397-00065-9
• Grashchenkov, N.I. How the life of Academician L.D. Landau was saved // Priroda. - 1963. - N 3. - S.106-108.
• Grashchenkov, N.I. The miraculous victory of Soviet doctors [about the struggle for the life of the physicist L.D. Landau] // Ogonyok. - 1962. - N 30. - P. 30.
• A long time ago... [L. D. Landau - one of the founders of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Moscow] // Ogonyok. - 1996. - N 50. - S.22-26.
• Danin, D. It was just that ... // Cinema Art. - 1973.- N 8. - S.85-87.
• Danin, D. Partnership [about the struggle to save the life of L. D. Landau] / / Literary newspaper. - 1962. - July 21.
• Zel'dovich, Ya. B. Encyclopedia of Theoretical Physics [to be awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962 to L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshits] // Priroda. - 1962. - N 7. - S.58-60.
• Kaganov, M.I. Landau - as I knew him // Priroda. - 1971. - N 7. - S.83-87.
• Kaganov, M.I. Landau school: what do I think about it. - Troitsk: Trovant, 1998. - 359 p.
• Kassirsky, I. A. The triumph of heroic therapy // Health. - 1963. - N 1. - S.3-4.
• Kravchenko, V. L. L. D. Landau - Nobel Prize Laureate // Science and Technology. - 1963. - N 2. - S.16-18.
• Lev Davidovich Landau [on his fiftieth birthday] // Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk. - 1958. - T.64, issue 3. - S.615-623.
• Lenin Prize in 1962 in the field of physical sciences [for awarding the prize to L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshits] // Physics at school. - 1962. - N 3. - S.7-8.
• Livanova, Anna. Landau. - M.: Knowledge, 1983.
• Lifshits, E. M. Landau's Live Speech // Science and Life. - 1971. - N 9. - S.14-22.
• Lifshits, E. M. History and explanations of superfluidity of liquid helium [on the 60th anniversary of Academician L. D. Landau] // Priroda. - 1968. - N 1. - S.73-81.
• Lifshits, E. M. Lev Davidovich Landau //Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk. - 1969. - T.97, N 4. - S.169-186.
• Masters of eloquence: [on the art of oratory by L. D. Landau]. - M.: Knowledge, 1991.
• Scientific work of L. D. Landau: Collection. - M.: Knowledge, 1963.
• Rolov, Bruno. Academician Landau // Science and technology. - 1968. - N 6. - S.16-20.
• Rumer, Yu. Pages of memoirs about L. D. Landau // Science and Life. - 1974. - N 6. - S.99-101.
• Tamm, I. E., Abrikosov, A. A., Khalatnikov, I. M. L. D. Landau - Nobel Prize Laureate in 1962 // Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. - 1962. - N 12. - S.63-67.
• Tsypenyuk, Y. Discovery of "Dry Water" [on the study of the properties of helium by P. L. Kapitsa and L. D. Landau] // Science and Life. - 1967. - N 3. - S.40-45.
• Yu. I. Krivonosov, Landau and Sakharov in the developments of the KGB, Komsomolskaya Pravda. August 8, 1992.
• Shalnikov A.I. Our Dau [for the award of the Nobel Prize to the Soviet physicist L.D. Landau] // Culture and life. - 1963. - No. 1. - S. 20-23.
• Shubnikov, L. V. Selected Works. Memories. - Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1990.
• What A. A. Rukhadze writes about Landau's mistakes and decency
• around Landau. Materials for the 100th anniversary of the birth of L. D. Landau. Part 1. Memories. Department of the History of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the IIET RAS. 2008. 117 p. The collection includes memoirs about L. D. Landau, published in various electronic journals in the last decade.

Links

• Landau, Lev Davidovich on the site "Heroes of the country"
• Landau, Lev Davidovich on Chronos (Russian)
• Gershtein C.S. The Great Universal of the 20th Century (To the 100th Anniversary of Lev Davidovich Landau)
• Khalatnikov I. M. Dow, Centaur and others. Chapters from the book
• Berestetsky V. B. Lev Davidovich Landau (On his fiftieth birthday) // Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 1958.
• Ginzburg V. L. Lev Davidovich Landau (On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday) // Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, January 1968.
• "CASE OF UFTI" (published by Yu. N. Raniuk) (Russian)
• Documents of the 1938 case on the site dedicated to Moses Korets (Russian)
• Documentary"The Ten Commandments of Landau" (Russian)
• The lion who was always right (an article in the MIPT newspaper "For Science" on the 100th anniversary of the birth of L. Landau) (Russian)
• How the "Course of Theoretical Physics" was born, Gennady Gorelik (Russian)
• Landau Lev- article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
• Lev Landau: "The bourgeoisie and modern physics" (article)
• Ginzburg about Landau's style (Russian)
• Grave of L. D. Landau
• Landau theoretical minimum (Russian)
• From the KGB dossier on Academician Landau (Russian) (KGB note to the Central Committee of the CPSU, 1957)
• Lev Davidovich Landau on the Name of Science website

Born in 1908, Baku; Jew; higher;

physicist, collaborator Institute for Physical Problems.

Lived: Moscow.

Lev Davidovich Landau was born on January 22, 1908 in Baku, his mother was a doctor, and his father was a petroleum engineer. Landau was a very gifted child with a penchant for the exact sciences. Already at the age of 14, he entered Baku University, immediately into two faculties - chemistry and physics and mathematics. From chemistry, however, he soon abandoned.

Landau made his first important contribution to the development of physics at the age of 19, after graduating from the Physics Department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Leningrad University.

He introduced the concept of density matrix as a method for a complete quantum mechanical description of systems that are part of a larger system. This concept has become fundamental in quantum statistics.

Landau spent the next few years on business trips to other countries, where he continued to study. He met Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and other physicists, both already famous and young, but outstanding.

In the 1930s, Landau headed the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkov, headed the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics of the Kharkov Mechanical Engineering Institute (now the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute). In the same period, he began to live with Concordia (Kora) Drobantseva, a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry, with whom he was in an open relationship. The marriage between Landau and Drobantseva was registered only in 1946, before the birth of her son.

After Landau's death, Cora began work on a memoir dedicated to her life with her husband. After the book was published, it caused a scandal in the academic community - scientists were shocked and outraged by the details of the personal lives of the great minds of the USSR described in it. In particular, she described the numerous adventures of Landau himself.

“Korushka, horror! I screwed up the girl. Imagine a very pretty girl.

The style of the dress promised a lot and she pressed herself so culturally, reached into her bosom - and there was nothing. Not that little, but simply zero. Well, I ran away from her like a frog, without even saying goodbye. And now I'm pissed!"

She gave examples of his stories.

Despite his love for women, he did not consider it necessary to help them realize themselves in physics - for example, once he refused to take a student of his former student, physicist Alexei Abrikosov, to graduate school.

After his dismissal from Kharkov University in 1937, Landau, at the invitation of the physicist Peter Kapitsa, moved to Moscow, becoming head of the theoretical department of the Institute of Physical Problems.

In 1938, Landau was arrested for anti-Soviet views - he participated in writing a leaflet calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime.

In it, Stalin was called a fascist dictator, in "his rabid hatred of real socialism" equaled Hitler and Mussolini.

He was released from prison a year later thanks to a letter in his defense from Niels Bohr and a guarantee from Kapitsa. He wrote to Beria that "Landau will not conduct any counter-revolutionary activities at my institute, and I will take all measures in my power to ensure that he does not conduct any counter-revolutionary work outside the institute" and promised in the event of anti-Soviet statements from Landau report to the NKVD. Landau was rehabilitated only in 1990.

Landau's views, however, did not change.

“I am a free-thinking person, and they are miserable lackeys. First of all, I feel superior,

- he later declared in relation to other scientists.

“If it were not for the fifth point, that is, nationality, I would not be doing special work, but only physics, a science that I am now lagging behind. The special work that I am doing gives me some kind of strength in my hands ... I am reduced to the level of a “scientific slave”, and this determines everything, ”Landau lamented about the need to carry out government tasks.

From 1945 to 1953, Landau participated in the Soviet Atomic Project and was awarded three Stalin Prizes, the Order of Lenin and the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for this. From 1955 until the end of his life, he taught at the Department of Quantum Theory and Electrodynamics of the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University.

The idea of ​​the famous "Landau and Lifshitz Course in Theoretical Physics" came to Landau back in the 1920s, while studying at Leningrad University.

He worked on it together with the physicist Matvey Bronstein, who was shot in 1938. In 1935-1938, a manuscript devoted to mechanics, statistics, and electrodynamics was published, co-authored by Landau's graduate students Leonid Pyatigorsky and Evgeny Lifshits. “Landafshitz” was the Soviet name for the book and is still called by Russian physics students.

Lifshitz wrote about Landau: “He told how he was shocked by the incredible beauty of the general theory of relativity ... He also talked about the state of ecstasy that led him to study the articles by Heisenberg and Schrödinger, which marked the birth of a new quantum mechanics. He said that they gave him not only the enjoyment of true scientific beauty, but also a keen sense of the power of human genius, the greatest triumph of which is that a person is able to understand things that he can no longer imagine. And, of course, this is precisely the curvature of space-time and the uncertainty principle.

Also in 1935, the book “Problems in Theoretical Physics. Part I. Mechanics”, written in collaboration with Lifshitz and physicist Lev Rozenkevich. The subsequent parts of the problem book did not come out because of the execution of Rozenkevich.

Over the next nearly 30 years, seven out of ten volumes of the course were produced. After Landau was injured in a car accident, Lifshitz also collaborated with other physicists.

"A tragic fate fell to his lot - to die twice,

Lifshitz wrote about Landau in the afterword of the second volume of the course. “The first time it happened was six years ago, on January 7, 1962, when on the highway, on the road from Moscow to Dubna, a passenger car collided with an oncoming truck.”

The dump truck demolished the door of the Volga in which Landau was riding. After the impact, the unconscious physicist fell onto the road.

“Yes, Dau received a complex of multiple injuries, each of which could lead to death: a fracture of seven ribs that tore the lungs; multiple hemorrhages in soft tissues and, as it turned out much later, in the retroperitoneal space with sweating into the abdominal cavity; extensive fractures of the pelvic bones with separation of the wing of the pelvis, displacement of the pubic bones; retroperitoneal hematoma - Dow's concave abdomen turned into a huge black blister.

But the doctors in those days said that all these terrible injuries were just scratches compared to a head injury!

Cora wrote.

Not only doctors fought for the scientist's life. One of the foreign publishers of his works, having learned about the incident, flew to Moscow with the necessary medicines. The students got hold of an artificial respiration apparatus and oxygen cylinders. Landau was in a coma for almost two months, but still survived.

In the same year, Landau received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for pioneering research in the theory of condensed matter, especially liquid helium."

After the accident, Landau retired from physics. Over the following years, he relatively recovered his health, but he still had difficulty walking and suffered from stomach pains. In March 1968, Landau's condition worsened. The pains sharply increased, the stomach was swollen, on March 25 severe vomiting appeared. Landau was hospitalized with a diagnosis of intestinal obstruction.

He was operated on at night. The next day, Landau felt better than the doctors expected. But over the following days, his condition repeatedly worsened, then improved again.

Landau died on April 1, 1968 due to thrombosis of the mesenteric vessels. A few hours before his death, he said: “Nevertheless, I lived my life well. I have always succeeded!"

Thanks to Landau, an outstanding school of theoretical physicists was created, many of whom contributed to the development of physics hardly less than Landau himself. Several dozen physical theories bear his name.