211 LANDAU 



Office: Tomsk Polytechnic Institute of USSR Academy of 



Sciences 

 Tomsk, USSR 



LANDAU, LEV^ DAVIDOVICH (Physicist) 



L. D. Landau was born January 22, 1908 in Baku. In 1927 he 

 graduated from Leningrad State University. He began working 

 in 1937 at the Institute of Physical Problems of the U.S.S.R. 

 Academy of Sciences. In 1943 he became a professor at Mos- 

 cow State University. He has been an Academician since 1946. 

 He was awarded a State Prize in 1946, Lenin Prize in 1962, 

 and two Orders of Lenin. In November 1962 Landau was 

 awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. He is a member of numer- 

 ous foreign scientific organizations including: the National 

 Academy of Sciences of the United States, the English Physical 

 Society, the English Royal Society, the Danish Royal Academy 

 of Sciences, the Dutch Academy of Sciences, and the French 

 Physical Society. 



Landau's investigations are in solid state theory and physics 

 of low temperatures. He has worked out a thermodynamic theo- 

 ry of the phase transitions of a secondary kind in solids bodies, 

 and elucidated their profound connection with the qualitative 

 change of a body's symmetry during transition. In 1940-41 

 Landau developed the macroscopic theory of liquid helium 

 superfluidity which takes place in this fluid at temperatures 

 close to absolute zero. Landau predicted the possibility of dif- 

 fusing sound waves with two unequal speeds (phenomenon of 

 secondary sound) in liquid helium. In his works on supercon- 

 ductivity, Landau presented a theory on the intermediate con- 

 dition of superconductors. In conjunction with A. Abrikosov, 

 I. Pomeranchuk and I. Khalatnikov, Landau found a solution to 

 the main equations of the quantum field theory, without the use 

 of the perturbation theory, and he proved that the concept of 

 point interaction is groundless because it leads to the absence 

 of any interaction. Recently, in connection with the discovery of 

 the nonconservation of parity in weak interactions. Landau pro- 

 posed the theory of combined inversion and the theory of a '^two 

 component neutrino." A considerable number of his investi- 

 gations are in nuclear physics and cosmic rays. 

 Bibliography: 



Continuum Mechanics, Hydrodynamics and the Theory of 

 Elasticity. Moscow-Leningrad: 1944. 

 and E. M. Lifshits . Field Theory, 2nd ed. Moscow- 

 Leningrad: 1948. 



