Lev Landau

Lev Landau married Kora T. Drobanzeva in 1937 and the couple had a son, Igor in 1946.

He believed in the practice of ‘free love’ as opposed to monogamy. He was also known to have signed a pact with his wife on ‘of non-aggression in married life’. Lev Landau was an atheist.

It is believed that he was hospitalized multiple times at the Kashchenko psychiatric hospital.

Lev Davidovich Landau was born on 22 January 1908 at Baku in Azerbaijan. His parents were Jewish. His father was as an engineer while his mother a physician.

As a child, he was known to be brilliant in mathematics and completed his schooling from gymnasium in 1920. As he was only 13 years, his parents enrolled him the Baku Economical Technical School, as he was too young to attend college.

In 1922, he registered at the Baku State University and studied in multiple departments at the same time. He enrolled for courses in the Department of Mathematics and Physics and the Department of Chemistry. However, after a short while he ceased to pursue his studies in Chemistry.

In 1924, he enrolled at the Department of Physics at the Leningrad State University. While studying here, he got introduced to the concept of theoretical physics and focused his studies on the subject. He completed his graduation in 1927, when he was 19-year-old.

During the years 1929 and 1931, he was awarded the Rockfeller Foundation Fellowship that allowed him to travel to places like Copenhagen, England, Switzerland and Germany.

For a brief duration in 1930, he got the opportunity to work under the guidance of renowned physicist Niels Bohr at the Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics. He also worked along with theoretical physicists Wolfgang Pauli and Paul Dirac. In 1931, he returned to Leningrad.

He was appointed the head of the department of theoretical physics at the Ukrainian Physico-Technical Institute at Kharkiv in 1932. In addition to this he held the position as head of department in theoretical physics at the Kharkiv Engineer-Mechanical Institute and Kharkiv University.

In 1934 he was honored with Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Within a year he was officially designated as a professor.

In 1932, he is said to have computed the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star also known as the ‘Chandrasekhar limit’. However, he did not apply it to the white dwarf stars.

In 1946 he was awarded the Stalin prize, the state honor of Soviet Union. He was awarded the USSR State prize several times later.

In 1954, he was given the title ‘Hero of Socialist Labour’.

He received the Max Planck Medal from the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft in 1960.

He was honored with the Fritz London Prize in 1961.

In 1962, he was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Physics. The same year he received the Lenin Science Prize along with E.M. Lifshitz.