Lev Landau
Soviet theoretical physicist (1908-1968) · Russia · Scientists · Died at 60
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Something wrong?He cracked superfluidity, phase transitions, plasma damping, and half a dozen other foundational problems across quantum mechanics and condensed matter - one of the last physicists to command the entire field before it splintered into specialties.
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, This work contains many things which are new and interesting. Unfortunately, everything that is new is not interesting, and everything which is interesting, is not new.
In the 1930s Landau was already saying, "I am one of the few universal physicists"; after the death of Enrico Fermi, this became "I am the last of the universal physicists".
A method is more important than a discovery, since the right method will lead to new and even more important discoveries.
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Lev Davidovich Landau was born on 22 January 1908 in the Soviet Union and became the era's defining theoretical physicist, moving fluently between quantum mechanics, condensed matter, and field theory when most researchers were narrowing their scope. He co-discovered the density matrix method independently of von Neumann, explained diamagnetism and Fermi liquids, invented the order parameter technique for phase transitions, and co-developed the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity. His theory of superfluidity - accounting for liquid helium II's strange behavior below 2.17 K - earned him the 1962 Nobel Prize. He also predicted Landau damping in plasmas, identified the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and proposed a two-component theory of neutrinos. He died on 1 April 1968, leaving a body of work that still anchors condensed matter physics.
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