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Lev Landau
Times obituary
An outstanding Russian theoretical physicist
Professor Lev Davidovich Landau, the distinguished Russian physicist and Nobel prizewinner, died on Monday at the age of 60.
Tass News Agency, giving news of the death, said that it was the result of the aftermath of injuries received in a car accident in January 1962. At the time of the accident, it was reported that his injuries included 11 broken bones and a fractured skull. Later, Professor Wilder Graves Penfield, the Canadian neurosurgeon, flew to Moscow to assist in the treatment of Professor Landau and, after an appeal to Sir John Cockcroft, British drugs were flown to the Russian capital. Some months later, it was made known that Russian doctors had recorded clinical death several times, but that each time Landau had been revived. In November 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium.
In an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1964, he revealed that during one of Stalin's purges, he was imprisoned as a suspected German spy. "I spent a year in prison, and it was clear that I would be unable to live for even another half year," he wrote. He said he had been saved through the intervention of Professor Peter Kapitza, the Russian scientist who went to the Kremlin and threatened to stop his own scientific work unless Landau was freed.
Landau was one of the most original as well as one of the most versatile theoretical physicists, and his death is a loss to science as well as the Soviet Union. A child prodigy in mathematics, he held—and from early in his university career taught—that creative work in any part of theoretical physics should begin with a deep mastery of all departments. His own work illustrated the value of this philosophy.
His greatest impact was in the strange world revealed by the study of very low temperatures. It is in this world that properties determined by wave mechanics show themselves not only (as in ordinary conditions) in the behavior of individual atoms and particles, but in the behavior of matter in the mass. Landau's interest dates from 1937 when, at the age of 29, he moved from the Physico-Technical Institute of the Ukraine, Kharkov, where he was head of the department of theoretical physics, to the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. This was the institute established for Professor Peter Kapitza, who had formerly worked in Cambridge.
Kapitza was doing experiments at the time on one of the unexpected properties shown by liquid helium at temperatures within about two degrees of absolute zero. The property he was working on was superfluidity, shown by the ability of liquid helium (when sufficiently cooled) to climb into or out of a beaker until the levels inside and outside are the same. Landau was drawn into a theoretical attack on this abnormal, low-temperature form of liquid helium—helium II. He was not the first in the field, but made an original approach which ultimately compelled attention.
Landau's theory, published in 1941, a new effect was predicted—a temperature wave described as "second sound." The same effect had been predicted independently and a little earlier by a Romanian-born American, Professor Laszio Tisza, following an approach initiated earlier by Professor F. London. In quantitative terms, the two theories led to different predictions, and it was Landau's that were correct. It was also Landau's prediction, which led to the experimental discovery of "second sound" in 1944 by V. Peshkov working in Moscow.
Tisza was known personally to Landau, and there was an amicable rivalry between them. It therefore seemed ironic—as well as in the best tradition of science—when, in the spring of 1950, J. J. R. Pellam and R. B. Scott at the United States Bureau of Standards announced measurements below 1.3° absolute, which agreed with Landau's prediction
tion that at a temperature between 1.0° and 1.1° absolute, the speed of propagation of "second sound" would fall to a minimum and would thereafter rise sharply. Tisza's theory, on the other hand, had predicted a progressive fall. Later in the year, K. R. Atkins and D. V. Osborne, in Orne, in Kapitza's old laboratory at Cambridge, confirmed a further prediction made by Landau. He had written that, as absolute zero was approached, the ratio of the speed of "second sound" to that of ordinary sound in helium II would be as 1 to 1/3—and this, too, fitted well with measurements.
Landau made other predictions as well, and the feeling of many physicists was summed up by Sir Francis Simon at an international conference the next year. He said that everyone always criticized Landau's theories, but it was always Landau's formula that was correct. While this may have been due, in a sense, to physical intuition—a quality which Landau indeed possessed—intuition began in his case from an exceptionally well-founded knowledge of classical physical theory, a fact evidenced by a five-volume work which he wrote with his former pupil, E. M. Lifshitz, and which was published between 1950 and 1955.
Born at Baku on the Caspian Sea on January 22, 1908, the son of an engineer, Landau entered Baku University at 14, transferred after two years to the University of Leningrad, and by 19 was engaged in research at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. After two years, he was sent abroad Though he visited other countries, including Britain, in the course of the next year and a half, the most important influence under which he came was that of Professor Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. During this period, at the age of 22, he developed a theory of diamagnetism of metals which was found seven years later to provide an explanation of an effect not otherwise accounted for; Landau's theory was only a part of the total story, but was still a necessary part. Among those he met during this time were Professor R. E. Pejeris, now at Oxford, with whom he wrote an influential joint paper in Copenhagen, and the Hungarian physicist, Professor Edward Teller, later the driving force behind the American H-bomb. Landau, then and some years after, was an extremely provocative young man who liked to shock.
On returning to Leningrad, he was appointed almost at once to the senior post at Kharkov, already mentioned. Bohr's opinion of him is sufficiently shown by the fact that in May 1934, he traveled from Copenhagen to Kharkov to attend an international conference of theoretical physics organized by this extremely young professor. Landau presided; Bohr opened the discussions on all papers; Tisza, whose scientific lines later crossed with Landau's, was one who attended. Landau, for his part, had, at Bohr's invitation, attended a conference in Copenhagen in 1933—and in 1934 was back again, wearing a red coat and still provocative. During the next two years, he produced original scientific papers at an average rate of one every six weeks and covered an astonishing range of subjects.
This characteristic he retained. Within four years of the 1941 paper predicting "second sound," he wrote a series of five papers on the effects of shock waves. He tackled plasma oscillations—later important in thermonuclear research; contributed to the fundamental theory of particles; and remained active in low-temperature physics. Here there are probably implications of his work that have still to be explored.
His personal qualities were something of an enigma. He had a flaming sincerity for -- and about -- science. He attracted students by his enthusiasm and evident knowledge, but to a greater age than most retained aspects of the enfant terrible. He could also be hot and merciless in criticism. Yet those who knew him, from Niels Bohr to the writer of a Soviet appreciation on the occasion of his 50th birthday, agreed that there was human warmth below his sharpness.
A triple Stalin Prize winner and an academic since 1946, he was a Foreign Member of both the Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. At the seventh International Conference on Low Temperature Physics in Toronto in 1960, he received in absentia the second Fritz London Award. The address which accompanied it was delivered by Professor Pellam (as he was by then), who nine years earlier had provided the first confirmation of Landau's numerical predictions about "second sound."
An outstanding Russian theoretical physicist
Professor Lev Davidovich Landau, the distinguished Russian physicist and Nobel prizewinner, died on Monday at the age of 60.
Tass News Agency, giving news of the death, said that it was the result of the aftermath of injuries received in a car accident in January 1962. At the time of the accident, it was reported that his injuries included 11 broken bones and a fractured skull. Later, Professor Wilder Graves Penfield, the Canadian neurosurgeon, flew to Moscow to assist in the treatment of Professor Landau and, after an appeal to Sir John Cockcroft, British drugs were flown to the Russian capital. Some months later, it was made known that Russian doctors had recorded clinical death several times, but that each time Landau had been revived. In November 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium.
In an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1964, he revealed that during one of Stalin's purges, he was imprisoned as a suspected German spy. "I spent a year in prison, and it was clear that I would be unable to live for even another half year," he wrote. He said he had been saved through the intervention of Professor Peter Kapitza, the Russian scientist who went to the Kremlin and threatened to stop his own scientific work unless Landau was freed.
Landau was one of the most original as well as one of the most versatile theoretical physicists, and his death is a loss to science as well as the Soviet Union. A child prodigy in mathematics, he held—and from early in his university career taught—that creative work in any part of theoretical physics should begin with a deep mastery of all departments. His own work illustrated the value of this philosophy.
His greatest impact was in the strange world revealed by the study of very low temperatures. It is in this world that properties determined by wave mechanics show themselves not only (as in ordinary conditions) in the behavior of individual atoms and particles, but in the behavior of matter in the mass. Landau's interest dates from 1937 when, at the age of 29, he moved from the Physico-Technical Institute of the Ukraine, Kharkov, where he was head of the department of theoretical physics, to the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. This was the institute established for Professor Peter Kapitza, who had formerly worked in Cambridge.
Kapitza was doing experiments at the time on one of the unexpected properties shown by liquid helium at temperatures within about two degrees of absolute zero. The property he was working on was superfluidity, shown by the ability of liquid helium (when sufficiently cooled) to climb into or out of a beaker until the levels inside and outside are the same. Landau was drawn into a theoretical attack on this abnormal, low-temperature form of liquid helium—helium II. He was not the first in the field, but made an original approach which ultimately compelled attention.
Landau's theory, published in 1941, a new effect was predicted—a temperature wave described as "second sound." The same effect had been predicted independently and a little earlier by a Romanian-born American, Professor Laszio Tisza, following an approach initiated earlier by Professor F. London. In quantitative terms, the two theories led to different predictions, and it was Landau's that were correct. It was also Landau's prediction, which led to the experimental discovery of "second sound" in 1944 by V. Peshkov working in Moscow.
Tisza was known personally to Landau, and there was an amicable rivalry between them. It therefore seemed ironic—as well as in the best tradition of science—when, in the spring of 1950, J. J. R. Pellam and R. B. Scott at the United States Bureau of Standards announced measurements below 1.3° absolute, which agreed with Landau's prediction
tion that at a temperature between 1.0° and 1.1° absolute, the speed of propagation of "second sound" would fall to a minimum and would thereafter rise sharply. Tisza's theory, on the other hand, had predicted a progressive fall. Later in the year, K. R. Atkins and D. V. Osborne, in Orne, in Kapitza's old laboratory at Cambridge, confirmed a further prediction made by Landau. He had written that, as absolute zero was approached, the ratio of the speed of "second sound" to that of ordinary sound in helium II would be as 1 to 1/3—and this, too, fitted well with measurements.
Landau made other predictions as well, and the feeling of many physicists was summed up by Sir Francis Simon at an international conference the next year. He said that everyone always criticized Landau's theories, but it was always Landau's formula that was correct. While this may have been due, in a sense, to physical intuition—a quality which Landau indeed possessed—intuition began in his case from an exceptionally well-founded knowledge of classical physical theory, a fact evidenced by a five-volume work which he wrote with his former pupil, E. M. Lifshitz, and which was published between 1950 and 1955.
Born at Baku on the Caspian Sea on January 22, 1908, the son of an engineer, Landau entered Baku University at 14, transferred after two years to the University of Leningrad, and by 19 was engaged in research at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute. After two years, he was sent abroad Though he visited other countries, including Britain, in the course of the next year and a half, the most important influence under which he came was that of Professor Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. During this period, at the age of 22, he developed a theory of diamagnetism of metals which was found seven years later to provide an explanation of an effect not otherwise accounted for; Landau's theory was only a part of the total story, but was still a necessary part. Among those he met during this time were Professor R. E. Pejeris, now at Oxford, with whom he wrote an influential joint paper in Copenhagen, and the Hungarian physicist, Professor Edward Teller, later the driving force behind the American H-bomb. Landau, then and some years after, was an extremely provocative young man who liked to shock.
On returning to Leningrad, he was appointed almost at once to the senior post at Kharkov, already mentioned. Bohr's opinion of him is sufficiently shown by the fact that in May 1934, he traveled from Copenhagen to Kharkov to attend an international conference of theoretical physics organized by this extremely young professor. Landau presided; Bohr opened the discussions on all papers; Tisza, whose scientific lines later crossed with Landau's, was one who attended. Landau, for his part, had, at Bohr's invitation, attended a conference in Copenhagen in 1933—and in 1934 was back again, wearing a red coat and still provocative. During the next two years, he produced original scientific papers at an average rate of one every six weeks and covered an astonishing range of subjects.
This characteristic he retained. Within four years of the 1941 paper predicting "second sound," he wrote a series of five papers on the effects of shock waves. He tackled plasma oscillations—later important in thermonuclear research; contributed to the fundamental theory of particles; and remained active in low-temperature physics. Here there are probably implications of his work that have still to be explored.
His personal qualities were something of an enigma. He had a flaming sincerity for -- and about -- science. He attracted students by his enthusiasm and evident knowledge, but to a greater age than most retained aspects of the enfant terrible. He could also be hot and merciless in criticism. Yet those who knew him, from Niels Bohr to the writer of a Soviet appreciation on the occasion of his 50th birthday, agreed that there was human warmth below his sharpness.
A triple Stalin Prize winner and an academic since 1946, he was a Foreign Member of both the Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. At the seventh International Conference on Low Temperature Physics in Toronto in 1960, he received in absentia the second Fritz London Award. The address which accompanied it was delivered by Professor Pellam (as he was by then), who nine years earlier had provided the first confirmation of Landau's numerical predictions about "second sound."
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