Google celebrates the 111th birth anniversary of noted physicist Lev Landau on the 22nd of January, with a google doodle dedicated to him.
He was a Soviet physicist who made some of the most significant discoveries in physics during the 20th century.
He was born in Baku (present-day Azerbaijan) on January 22, 1908. His father was an engineer with an oil firm and his mother a doctor.
A boy who showed spark right from the beginning, Landau started college well before his peers. At 19, he graduated from the Physical Department of Leningrad University and started his career at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. He earned his PhD at 21. Post this he was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation Fellow that allowed him to work in countries like Germany, Switzerland, England and Copenhagen where he worked under Niels Bohr, who was known for his work in quantum theory.
He was a brilliant student and his first paper pn the ‘Theory of the Spectra of Diatomic Molecules’, was already in print when he was just 18-years-old.
Lev Landau co-discovered the density matrix method in quantum mechanics, theory of second-order phase transitions, theory of Fermi liquid, the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity among others.
“His (Landau’s) wide-ranging research has linked his name to many concepts that he was first to describe including: Landau Levels, which are the focus of today’s Doodle, Landau diamagnetism, Landau damping, and the Landau energy spectrum”, says Google in a post explaining the doodle.
Lev Landau was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research into liquid helium’s behavior at extremely low temperatures in 1962.
Later, he also worked as a professor of theoretical physics in the Kharkov and Moscow State Universities. Landau’s research covers all branches of theoretical physics, ranging from fluid mechanics to quantum field theory. According to the Nobel Prize website, following P.L. Kapitsa’s discovery in 1938 of the “superfluidity of liquid helium, Landau began extensive research which led him to the construction of the complete theory of the ‘quantum liquids’ at very low temperatures.”
Several concepts are attributed to Landau, including Landau Distribution, Landau Gauge, Landau Pole. In 1962, the same year of his Nobel Prize, he and E.M. Lifshitz jointly received the Lenin Science Prize for their Course of Theoretical Physics.
He has an institute, the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Moscow in his honour.