“Everyone has enough strength to live a life with dignity. And all the talk about what a difficult time is - just a clever way to justify your laziness, inaction and dullness."
L. D. Landau
Lev Landau was born on the shores of the Caspian Sea in the oil capital of the Russian Empire, the city of Baku. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the first oil well was drilled in the nearby village of Bibi-Heybat, and a few years later, kerosene began to be driven on an industrial scale at the new plant. Big capital, sensitive to the smell of money, rushed to Baku in a stormy stream. David Lvovich Landau, the son of a learned rabbi from Prague, had a direct relationship to the oil boom - he worked as an engineer in a large Baku company. Thanks to his successful career, David Lvovich was a very wealthy man. In 1905, at the age of thirty-nine, he married twenty-nine-year-old Lyubov Veniaminovna Garkavi, a girl of an unusual and difficult fate. She was born into a large poor family. Having saved a certain amount of money by tutoring, Lyubov Veniaminovna spent it on paying for a course at the University of Zurich. A year later, she continued her education in St. Petersburg at the Women's Medical Institute, after graduating from which she took up gynecology and obstetrics in the Baku oil fields. The independent and independent character of Lyubov Veniaminovna encouraged her to be active even after the wedding, despite the fact that all material problems were in the past. She worked as a sanitary doctor, an intern in a military hospital, and a teacher.
In 1906, the first child was born in the Landau family - daughter Sonya, and on January 22, 1908, the second - son Lev. The parents attached the most serious importance to the education and upbringing of children - a French governess sat with them, teachers of drawing, gymnastics, and music were invited to the house. Leo and Sonya mastered German and French languages to perfection in early childhood. The problems began when David and Lyubov Landau decided to instill in their children a love of music. Sonechka, having studied the piano for ten years, at the end of her education categorically refused to continue to approach the instrument. The future academician, who from childhood did not tolerate violence against himself, immediately resolutely refused to indulge his parental whims. But Leo learned to write and read at the age of four. In addition, the boy passionately fell in love with arithmetic, which forced his parents to reconsider their views on his future.
In the gymnasium, Lev greatly upset the teacher of literature with a clumsy handwriting, but in the exact sciences he thrilled teachers with his knowledge. He learned to differentiate and integrate very early, but in the gymnasium these skills were not useful to him. These sections of mathematics went far beyond the framework of classical schooling, and in addition, the educational institution was soon closed, and all students were dismissed for indefinite vacations. Soon, practical parents sent their son to a commercial school, which was later renamed the Baku Economic College. The entrance exams were not difficult, and Landau was immediately admitted to the penultimate course. Fortunately for science, after graduating from college, the young man was still young to work as an accountant. He decided to continue his education - now at Baku University.
Having brilliantly passed the entrance exams in 1922, Lev Davidovich was enrolled in two departments of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics - natural (where the emphasis was on chemistry) and mathematics. Fourteen-year-old Landau turned out to be the youngest student at the university, but it was not his age that stood out among other students. Leo, who was still quite a boy, allowed himself to argue with eminent teachers. Someone Lukin, a former professor of the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, read mathematics in the educational institution, whose ferocity has become firmly established in local folklore. The students called him "general" behind his back. Once, at a lecture, Landau ventured into a fierce skirmish with him. From the outside it looked like a teenager was in a cage with a tiger. However, the end turned out to be unexpected - the discouraged "general", admitting his mistake, congratulated Lev Davidovich on the right decision in front of everyone. Since then, the professor, meeting Landau in the corridors of the university, always shook his hand. And soon the parents of the young genius received advice from the university leaders to transfer their son to Leningrad, which at that time was the capital of Soviet science. Landau received a letter of recommendation from the dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, which said: “… I consider it my duty to note the extraordinary talents of this young student, with tremendous ease and with great depth of simultaneously passing the discipline of two departments. … I am firmly convinced that subsequently Leningrad University will be rightfully proud of the fact that it has prepared an outstanding scientist for the country."
So in 1924, Lev Davidovich ended up in the Northern capital of Russia, where he took up science with renewed vigor. Working eighteen hours a day did not have the best effect on his health. Chronic insomnia forced Landau to see a doctor who categorically forbade the young man to work at night. The doctor's advice went to the future academician for future use - from that moment and throughout his entire life, the scientist never worked at night again. And about himself, he always spoke with a smile: "I have not a physique, but body reading."
At Leningrad University, Lev Davidovich first heard about quantum mechanics. Many years later he will say: “The works of Schrödinger and Heisenberg delighted me. Never before have I felt the power of human genius with such clarity. " The new physical theory was in those years at the stage of formation, and, as a result, there was no one to teach Landau quantum mechanics. The young man had to master the most complex mathematical apparatus and basic ideas of the new physics himself. As a result, he developed a characteristic style of scientific work throughout his life - he always preferred fresh magazines to books, saying that "thick folios do not carry anything new, they are a cemetery where thoughts of the past are buried."
In 1927, Lev Davidovich graduated from the university and entered the graduate school of the Leningrad Physics and Technology Institute (LPTI), joining a group of theoreticians led by Yakov Frenkel. And in October 1929, Landau, who was considered the best graduate student of LPTI, went on his first business trip abroad on a ticket from the People's Commissariat of Education. The trip turned out to be an extraordinary success for the talented young man - a brilliant scientist, one of the founders of modern physics, Albert Einstein, lived and worked in Berlin at that time. Max Born, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and other prominent scientists and authors of quantum mechanics worked in Germany, Switzerland and Denmark. Landau met with Einstein at the University of Berlin. They had a long conversation, during which Lev Davidovich, wasting no time, tried to prove to his interlocutor the validity of one of the main postulates of quantum mechanics - the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The arguments and youthful enthusiasm of the twenty-year-old physicist did not convince Einstein, tempered in disputes with Bohr and who believed all his life that "God does not play dice." Shortly after this conversation, Lev Davidovich, at the invitation of Max Born, visited the University of Göttingen. And in Leipzig he met with another equally brilliant physicist, Heisenberg.
At the beginning of 1930, a Soviet scientist appeared in Copenhagen on Blegdamsvey Street at number 15. This building was known throughout the world for the fact that the famous Niels Bohr lived in it. As soon as he crossed the threshold of his apartment, Landau was terribly embarrassed and at the same time delighted with the welcoming words of the Danish scientist: “It's great that you came to us! We will learn a lot from you! " And although it later turned out that the famous physicist out of the kindness of his soul greeted most of his guests in this way, in this case this phrase probably sounded more appropriate than usual. The most talented, energetic and witty Landau surprisingly quickly and easily got along with the venerable scientist - the national hero of his country, but he did not lose his human simplicity and unfeigned "scientific" curiosity. Austrian scientist Otto Frisch, who was present at one of their conversations, wrote: “This scene is forever imprinted in my memory. Landau and Bohr grappled with each other. The Russian was sitting on a bench and gesticulating desperately. Bending over him, the Dane waved his hands and shouted something. None of them even thought that there was something strange in such a scientific discussion. " Another curious sketch belongs to the Belgian physicist Leon Rosenfeld, who said: “I arrived at the institute in February 1931, and the first person I met was Georgy Gamow. I asked him about the news and he showed me his pencil drawing. It showed Landau, tied to a chair, with his mouth tied, and Bohr, standing nearby and saying: "Wait, wait, give me at least a word to say!" Many years later, Niels Bohr admits that he always considered Lev Davidovich his best student. And the wife of the great Dane wrote in her memoirs: “Niels fell in love with Landau from the first day. He was terribly unbearable, interrupted, ridiculed, looked like a disheveled boy. But how talented he was and how truthful!"
The next stop on Landau's journey through Europe was Great Britain, where Paul Dirac and Ernest Rutherford worked. In those years, Pyotr Kapitsa also worked at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, who, with his wit and outstanding abilities of an experimental physicist, managed to win the favor of Rutherford. Thus, during the year spent in Europe, Lev Davidovich talked with almost all "first-class" physicists. The works of the Soviet scientist, published during this time, received high marks and clearly testified that, despite his age, he was already one of the leading theorists in the world.
Returning to the Soviet Union in 1931, Landau found himself in the midst of a lively discussion of a discovery that promised our country incredible profits. The author of this invention, connected, by the way, with the properties of electrical insulators, was the head of the Leningrad Physics and Technology Institute, the excellent Soviet scientist Abram Ioffe. Unfortunately, even great people are not immune from delusions, and Ioffe's new discovery just belonged to the category of delusions. Very quickly, Lev Davidovich found the master's mistake, and the inspiration of the discoverers turned into disappointment. In addition, the matter was complicated by the fact that the young theoretician was too sharp on his tongue and did not at all think about the need to spare the pride of his colleagues. The completely excusable persistence of Abram Fedorovich, with which the head of the Physicotechnical Institute defended his errors, led to a final break. It all ended with the famous academician publicly declaring that there was not a drop of common sense in the last work of his graduate student. But Landau was not the kind of person to keep silent in response. His condescending remark: "Theoretical physics is a complex science, and not everyone can understand it," - firmly entrenched in the annals of history. Of course, after this incident, it became much more difficult for Lev Davidovich to work at the Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute. A long time later he will say that he felt "somehow uncomfortable" there.
Shortly before the events described, at the suggestion of the same Abram Ioffe, in the city of Kharkov - the then capital of Ukraine - the UPTI (Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology) was organized. In August 1932, Landau was invited by the director of the Kharkov Physicotechnical Institute, Professor Ivan Obreimov, to take the place of the head of the theoretical department. At the same time, he accepted the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Mechanical and Machine-Building Institute of the city of Kharkov. Impressed by the scientific and educational institutions he had seen in Europe, the twenty-four-year-old physicist set himself the task of creating a school of theoretical physics of the highest class in the Soviet Union from scratch. Looking ahead, we note that thanks to the efforts of Lev Davidovich, such a school in our country eventually appeared. It was formed by Landau's students who passed his famous "theoretical minimum", which includes nine exams - seven in theoretical physics and two in mathematics. This truly unique test could be tried to pass no more than three times, and in twenty-five years the "theoretical minimum" was overcome by only forty-three people. The first of these was the outstanding Soviet scientist Alexander Kompaneets. After him, Evgeny Lifshits, Isaak Pomeranchuk, Alexander Akhiezer, who later became famous theoretical physicists, passed the test.
Landau's private life is curious. He was interested in everything that was happening in the world. Every morning Lev Davidovich began with a study of newspapers. The scientist knew the history perfectly, he remembered many poems by heart, in particular Lermontov, Nekrasov and Zhukovsky. He was very fond of cinema. Unfortunately, in the Kharkov period of his life, Lev Davidovich was rarely photographed. On the other hand, there are still quite picturesque memories left about the scientist by one of his students: “I met Landau in 1935, when I came to Kharkov for my graduation practice. Already at the first meeting, he struck me with his originality: thin, tall, with curly black hair, with lively black eyes and long arms, actively gesticulating during a conversation, dressed somewhat extravagantly (in my opinion). He wore an elegant blue jacket with metal buttons. Sandals on bare feet and kolomyanka trousers did not go well with them. He did not wear a tie then, preferring an unbuttoned collar."
Once Professor Landau appeared at the university at a graduation party and categorically demanded that he be introduced to the “prettiest girl”. He was introduced to Concordia (Cora) Drabantseva, a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry. If in the scientist's dreams the image of a written beauty was drawn, then the girl was very similar to her - with large gray-blue eyes, blond, with a slightly upturned nose. After the evening, Landau accompanied his new acquaintance home, and on the way told her about foreign countries. Upon learning that Kora was going to work as a technologist at a confectionery factory in a chocolate shop, he asked: “Let me call you the Chocolate Girl. You know, I love chocolate. " To the girl's question whether chocolate is tasty in Europe, Landau replied: “I went on a business trip with government money. I couldn't waste it on chocolate. But he ate it in England, becoming a Rockefeller Foundation scholar. " Their frivolous acquaintance with enormous work over the course of several years acquired the quality of a serious relationship, since Lev Davidovich believed that "marriage is a cooperative that kills all love", while adding that a good thing cannot be called marriage. It was possible to bring the recognized leader of Soviet theoretical thought to the registry office only nine days before the birth of the child.
Separately, it is worth talking about the method of classification of scientists, which was developed by Lev Davidovich and which made it possible to assess their capabilities, as well as their contribution to science. Academician Vitaly Ginzburg, a student of Lev Davidovich, told about the "Dau scale" in his article: "His passion for clarity and systematization many years ago resulted in a comic classification of physicists in a logarithmic scale. In accordance with it, a physicist, for example, of the second class, did ten times less (the key word was made, it was only about achievements), a physicist of the first class. On this scale, Albert Einstein had half the class, and Schrödinger, Bohr, Heisenberg, Fermi, Dirac had the first class. Landau considered himself to be in a two-half class, and only after exchanging his fifties, satisfied with his next job (I remember the conversation, but I forgot what achievement was being discussed), he said that he had reached the second grade."
Another classification of Landau related to his relationship with the "weaker sex". The scientist divided the courtship process into twenty-four stages, and believed that up to the eleventh the slightest hitch is destructive. Women, of course, were also divided into classes. Landau referred to the first as an unattainable ideal. Then there were beautiful girls, then - just pretty and pretty. The fourth class included the owners of something pleasing to the eye, but the fifth - all the others. To establish the fifth grade, according to Landau, it was necessary to have a chair. If you put a chair next to a fifth-grade woman, then it's better to look not at her, but at the chair. The scientist also divided men in relation to the fair sex into two groups: "fragrant" (who are interested in the inner content) and "handsome". In turn, the "handsome" fell into subspecies - "skaters", "Mordists", "nogists" and "rukists". Landau referred to himself as a "pure handsome", believing that a woman should be all beautiful.
Lev Davidovich's pedagogical methods were very different from traditional ones, which ultimately forced the rector of the university to take a number of actions to "educate" the teacher. Inviting Landau to his office, he expressed doubt that physics students need to know who the author of Eugene Onegin is and what sins are “mortal”. This is the kind of question that students often heard from a young professor at exams. Of course, the correct answers did not affect academic performance, but the rector's bewilderment must be recognized as legitimate. In conclusion, he told Landau that "pedagogical science does not allow anything of the kind." “I have never heard more stupidity in my life,” Lev Davidovich answered innocently and was immediately dismissed. And although the rector could not expel the professor without the permission of the People's Commissar of Education, the victim did not waste time and energy on restoring justice and left for the capital of Russia. Three weeks after his departure, Landau told his Kharkov students and colleagues that he would work for Kapitsa at the Institute of Physical Problems, writing in the conclusion: "… And you, have already reached the third and a half level and can work on your own."
Life at the Kapitsa Institute was in full swing in those years. The best specialists, whom Petr Leonidovich was looking for throughout the country, worked in this place. Lev Davidovich headed his theoretical department. In 1937-1938, thanks to the experimental studies of Kapitsa, the superfluidity of helium was discovered. By cooling helium to temperatures close to absolute zero, physicists observed its flow through ultra-thin slits. Attempts to explain the phenomenon of superfluidity did not succeed until Landau got down to business. The theory of superfluidity, for which he later received the Nobel Prize, was formed with a one-year hiatus. In April 1938, Lev Davidovich was arrested on trumped-up charges. At the Lubyanka, according to the physicist, “they tried to sew on the authorship of some stupid leaflet, and this despite my aversion to any kind of scribbling”. Kapitsa was also outraged to the core. In the pre-war years, he enjoyed considerable influence in the government and used it to help his best theorist. On the day of the scientist's arrest, Kapitsa sent a letter to Iosif Vissarionovich, in which he said: “Comrade Stalin, today they have arrested a researcher L. D. Landau. Despite his age, he is the largest theoretical physicist in our country … There is no doubt that his loss as a scientist for the Soviet and world sciences will not go unnoticed and will be very strongly felt. In view of Landau's exceptional talent, I ask you to treat his case carefully. It also seems to me that it is necessary to take into account his character, which, to put it simply, is nasty. He is a bully and a bully, loves to look for mistakes from others and, when he finds them, begins to tease disrespectfully. This made him many enemies … However, for all his shortcomings, I do not believe that Landau is capable of something dishonest."
By the way, the relationship between the two scientists - Kapitsa and Landau - was never friendly or close, but the “centaur,” as the Institute staff called its director, did everything possible to get the outstanding theoretician back to work. Not counting only on his own authority, he drew the attention of Niels Bohr to the fate of the physicist. The Danish scientist immediately responded and also wrote a letter to Stalin, in which, among other things, he said: “… I heard rumors about the arrest of Professor Landau. I am convinced that this is a regrettable misunderstanding, since I cannot imagine that Professor Landau, who won the recognition of the scientific world for his significant contribution to atomic physics and devoted himself entirely to research work, could make something justifying an arrest … " In April 1939, the efforts of Pyotr Leonidovich were crowned with success - "under the guarantee of Kapitsa" Landau was released from prison.
Kapitsa was well aware that the rather modest position of head of the theoretical department did little to match the capabilities and scale of Landau's talent. Not once did he offer his collaborator assistance in creating a separate institute for theoretical physics, where Lev Davidovich could take the place of director. However, Landau categorically rejected such proposals: “I am absolutely not suitable for administrative activities. Now Fizproblema has excellent working conditions, and of my own free will I will not go anywhere from here. " However, the "excellent" conditions did not last long - in June 1941 the war broke out, and the Kapitsa Institute was evacuated to Kazan. During these years, Lev Davidovich, like many other scientists, reoriented himself to solving defense problems, in particular, he was engaged in problems related to the detonation of explosives. In 1943, the State Defense Committee decided to resume work on the uranium theme. Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific supervisor of the work, who appealed to the government with a substantiation of the need for a theoretical study of the mechanism of a nuclear explosion and a proposal to entrust this problem to "Professor Landau, a well-known theoretical physicist, a subtle expert on such issues." As a result, Lev Davidovich headed the work of the settlement department, which worked within the framework of the "Atomic Project".
In 1946, major changes took place at the Institute for Physical Problems. Pyotr Kapitsa was in disgrace, the Council of Ministers of the USSR dismissed him from the post of director, completely reorienting the institute to solve problems associated with the "Atomic Project". Anatoly Aleksandrov, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, was appointed the new head of the IFP. And in the same year, Landau, bypassing the title of Corresponding Member, was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences, also awarded him the Stalin Prize for the study of phase transformations. However, his main business in those years remained the calculations of the processes occurring during a nuclear explosion. Lev Davidovich's merits in the development of the atomic bomb are undeniable and were awarded two Stalin Prizes (in 1949 and 1953) and the title of Hero of Socialist Labor (1954). However, for the scientist himself, this work became a tragedy, since Lev Davidovich organically could not do that which did not interest him; results ". An example of Landau's attitude to a nuclear bomb is a characteristic episode. Once, while giving a lecture in the House of Writers, he touched on thermonuclear reactions, saying that they were of no practical importance. Someone from the audience reminded the scientist of a thermonuclear bomb, to which Lev Davidovich immediately replied that it never entered his head to classify a bomb as a practical application of nuclear energy.
Soon after the death of Joseph Stalin, Landau handed over all the affairs related to the Atomic Project to his student Isaak Khalatnikov, and he himself returned to the creation of the Course in Theoretical Physics, a work that he wrote throughout his life. The Course consisted of ten volumes, the very first of which was published in 1938, and the last two appeared in print after the scientist's death. This work, written in a clear and lively language, is devoted to the most complex issues of modern physics. It has been translated into many languages and is, without exaggeration, a reference book for every physicist in the world.
On May 5, 1961, Niels Bohr arrived in Moscow at the invitation of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Lev Davidovich met his teacher at the airport, and during all the days of Bohr's stay in Russia he practically never parted with him. In those days, in one of countless seminars, someone asked a guest how he built his first-class physics school. The famous Dane replied: "I have never been afraid to show my students that I am more stupid than them." Evgeny Lifshits, who translated the scientist's speech, was mistaken and said: "I have never been ashamed to tell my students that they are fools." Petr Kapitsa reacted to the uproar with a smile: “This slip of the tongue is not accidental. It expresses the main difference between the Bohr school and the Landau school, to which Lifshitz belongs."
On January 7, 1962, on the way to Dubna, Lev Davidovich got into a terrible car accident. The consequences of it were terrible, according to the first record in the history of the disease were recorded: "a fracture of the vault and base of the skull, multiple brain contusions, a bruised laceration in the temporal region, a compressed chest, seven ribs fracture, a fracture of the pelvis, damage to the lung." The famous neurosurgeon Sergei Fedorov, who arrived at the consultation, said: “It was quite obvious that the patient was dying. A hopeless, moribund patient. " In the four days that have passed since the disaster, Landau was dying three times. On January 22nd, the scientist developed cerebral edema. In the hospital where Lev Davidovich was lying, a "physical headquarters" of eighty-seven people was organized. Pupils, friends and colleagues of Landau were in the hospital around the clock, organized consultations with foreign medical luminaries, collected the money necessary for treatment. Only a month and a half after the tragedy, doctors announced that the patient's life was out of danger. And on December 18, 1962, Lev Davidovich said: "I lost a year, but I learned during this time that people are much better than I thought."
On November 1, 1962, Landau, who was in the hospital of the Academy of Sciences, was delivered a telegram stating that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for "pioneering work in the field of the theory of condensed matter, primarily liquid helium." The next day, the Swedish ambassador arrived at the hospital, conducting an official ceremony of presenting the prestigious award. From that moment on, the scientist came under the scrutiny of the press. Not a day passed without reporters trying to get into his room. Despite the poor health and warnings from doctors who tried to restrict access to the patient, the Nobel laureate welcomed everyone with pleasure. A reporter from a Swedish newspaper who visited Lev Davidovich described the meeting as follows: “Landau has turned gray, he has a stick in his hands, and he moves with small steps. But it is worth talking to him, it immediately becomes clear that the diseases did not change him at all. There is no doubt that if it were not for the pain, he would have immediately got down to work …”.
By the way, the doctors who treated the brilliant physicist more than once or twice had to deal with his peculiar character, which many found unbearable. Once a well-known psychiatrist and neuropathologist, treating with hypnosis, came to Lev Davidovich. Landau, who called hypnosis "deception of workers", greeted the guest with caution. The doctor, warned, in turn, about the character of the patient, took two more doctors to show his abilities. Soon after the session began, the doctor's assistants fell asleep. Landau himself felt uncomfortable, but he did not want to sleep. The doctor, anticipating a major failure, gathered all his will in his gaze, but the scientist only frowned and looked impatiently at his watch. After the psychiatrist left, Lev Davidovich said to his wife: “Balagan. He brought a couple more geese with him, which slept here."
In total, Landau spent more than two years in the hospital - only at the end of January 1964, the scientist was allowed to leave the hospital ward. But, despite his recovery, Lev Davidovich could no longer return to active work. And soon after the celebration of his sixtieth birthday - on the morning of March 24, 1968, Landau suddenly became ill. The council, assembled at the hospital of the Academy of Sciences, spoke in favor of the operation. For the first three days after her, the physicist felt so good that the doctors had hopes of recovery. However, on the fifth day the patient's temperature rose, and on the sixth day his heart began to fail. On the morning of April 1, Lev Davidovich said: "I will not survive this day." He was dying in consciousness, his last words were: “I have lived a good life. I have always succeeded. " Lev Davidovich was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery on April 4, 1968.
The question of what Landau's achievement in science should be considered the most important has no answer. The highly specialized approach to theory did not touch the genius scientist in any way. He felt equally free in non-intersecting areas - from quantum field theory to hydrodynamics. They said about Lev Davidovich: "In this puny fragile body there is a whole institute of theoretical physics." Not everyone can assess the scale of his activities in science. But you can trust the words of knowledgeable people who said: “Landau created a completely new image of a scientist, some kind of separate philosophy of life. Physics has turned into a kind of romantic country, an exciting adventure … What he accomplished is clothed in an extremely beautiful, magnificent form, and acquaintance with his works gives physicists enormous aesthetic pleasure."
