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Lev Davidovich Landau (Ле́в Дави́дович Ланда́у) (January 22, 1908 – April 1, 1968) was a prominent Soviet physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics whose broad field of work included the theory of superconductivity and superfluidity, quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics and particle physics. He developed the theory of second order phase transitions. Among many physical effects named after Landau are Landau pole and Landau damping.
Landau was born into a Jewish family in Baku, Russian Empire (now Baky, Azerbaijan).
Since 1932, Landau headed the Department of Theory of the Ukrainian Physical and Technical Institute in Kharkov (now Ukraine). In 1937 he became head of the Department of Theory of the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. He was also a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
He was arrested in 1938, during the Great Purge, but released one year later. He suffered a major car accident in 1962 which precluded him from further scientific activities.
In 1965, his research laboratory was transformed into what is now known as Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics.
He was a Nobel Laureate in Physics for the year 1962 for his pioneering theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium. He is also admired for a prolific series of textbooks on theoretical physics, co-authored with E. M. Lifshitz.
He died in Moscow in 1968 and was interred there in Novodevichy Cemetery.
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