Literary and historical notes of a young technician. Lev Davidovich Landau Academician Landau biography personal life
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Biography
A gold medal, awarded since 1998 by the Department of Nuclear Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is named after Landau. Also named after Landau is the Institute of Theoretical Physics. L. D. Landau RAS
Born into the family of oil engineer David Lvovich Landau and his wife Lyubov Veniaminovna in Baku on January 22, 1908. Since 1916, he studied at the Baku Jewish gymnasium, where his mother, Lyubov Veniaminovna Landau (nee Garkavi), was a natural science teacher. Unusually gifted mathematically, Landau joked about himself: “I learned to integrate at the age of 13, but I always knew how to differentiate.” At the age of fourteen he entered the University of Baku, where he studied simultaneously in two faculties: physics, mathematics and chemistry. For special successes he was transferred to Leningrad University. After graduating from the physics department of Leningrad University in 1927, Landau became a graduate student and later an employee of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology; in 1926-1927 he published his first works on theoretical physics. In 1929, he was on a scientific trip to continue his education in Germany, in Denmark with Niels Bohr, in England and Switzerland. There he worked with leading theoretical physicists, including Niels Bohr, whom he considered his only teacher from then on. In 1932, he headed the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkov. Since 1937 at the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Academician Landau (close friends and colleagues called him Dau) is considered a legendary figure in the history of domestic and world science. Quantum mechanics, solid state physics, magnetism, low temperature physics, cosmic ray physics, hydrodynamics, quantum field theory, physics of the atomic nucleus and elementary particle physics, plasma physics - this is not a complete list of areas that attracted Landau’s attention at different times. They said about him that in “the huge building of physics of the 20th century there were no locked doors for him.”
From 1932 to 1937 he worked at UPTI; After his dismissal from Kharkov University and the subsequent strike of physicists, Landau in February 1937 accepted the invitation of Pyotr Kapitsa to take the position of head of the theoretical department of the newly built Institute of Physical Problems (IPP) and moved to Moscow. After Landau’s departure, the destruction of UPTI by the regional NKVD began, foreign specialists A. Weisberg and F. Houtermans were arrested, in August-September 1937 physicists L. V. Rozenkevich (Landau’s co-author), L. V. Shubnikov, V. S. Gorsky (“UPTI case”). In April 1938, Landau in Moscow edited a leaflet written by M. A. Korets calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime, in which Stalin was called a fascist dictator. The text of the leaflet was handed over to the anti-Stalin group of IFLI students for distribution by mail before the May Day holidays. This intention was discovered by the USSR state security agencies, and Landau, Korets and Yu. B. Rumer were arrested for anti-Soviet agitation. Landau spent a year in prison and was released thanks to a letter in defense from Niels Bohr and the intervention of Kapitsa, who took Landau “on bail.” After his release, until his death in 1968, Landau was an employee of the IFP.
In 1955 he signed the “Letter of the Three Hundred”.
Death
On January 7, 1962, on the road from Moscow to Dubna, Landau was involved in a car accident. As a result of serious injuries, he was in a coma for 59 days. Physicists from all over the world took part in saving Landau's life. A 24-hour watch was organized at the hospital. The missing medicines were delivered by plane from European countries and the USA. As a result of these measures, Landau's life was saved, despite very serious injuries.
After the accident, Landau practically stopped engaging in scientific activities. However, according to his wife and son, Landau was gradually returning to his normal state and in 1968 was close to resuming his physics studies.
Landau died a few days after surgery to correct an intestinal obstruction. The diagnosis is thrombosis of mesenteric vessels. Death occurred as a result of blockage of the artery by a detached blood clot. Landau's wife in her memoirs expressed doubts about the competence of some of the doctors who treated Landau, especially doctors from special clinics for the treatment of the USSR leadership.
Personal life and the theory of happiness
As a child, fascinated by science, Landau vowed to himself “never smoke, drink, or marry.” Also, he believed that marriage is a cooperative relationship that has nothing to do with love. However, he met a chemistry graduate, Concordia (Cora) Drobantseva, who had separated from her first husband. She swore that she would not be jealous of other women, and from 1934 they lived together in a civil marriage. Landau believed that lies and betrayal destroy marriage most of all, and therefore they entered into a “non-aggression pact in married life” (as conceived by Dau), which gave relative freedom to both spouses in affairs on the side. An official marriage was concluded between them in 1946 after the birth of their son Igor. Igor Lvovich Landau graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, an experimental physicist in the field of low temperature physics.
Landau's only non-physical theory was the theory of happiness. He believed that every person should and even has an obligation to be happy. To do this, he derived a simple formula that contained three parameters:
Job
- Love
- Communication with people
Love. Belinsky's words “Love is poetry and the sun of life!” - Dau was delighted. His ideal man went back to the brave knight, the conqueror of ladies' hearts, who devotes a third of his life to love affairs. Dau himself understood that this was a book image, but he still took love seriously.
Communication with people. Landau succeeded in this. He could not live without constant communication with colleagues, students and friends. He had a great many acquaintances; in addition, his communication included a seminar, conversations with students, and letters.
Brief chronology of life and activities
January 22, 1908 - in Baku, a son, Lev, was born into the family of Lyubov Veniaminovna Garkavi and David Lvovich Landau.
- 1916 - 1920 - study at the gymnasium
- 1920 - 1922 - studied at the Baku Economic College.
- 1922 - 1924 - studied at the Azerbaijan State University.
- 1924 - transfer to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Leningrad State University.
- 1926 - admission to supernumerary graduate school at the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology.
- Participation in the V Congress of Russian Physicists in Moscow (December 15-20).
- Publication of Landau’s first scientific work, “On the Theory of Spectra of Diatomic Molecules.”
- 1927 - graduation from university (January 20) and enrollment in graduate school at the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology.
- In the work “The Problem of Radiation Braking,” he introduces for the first time a new concept into quantum mechanics - the density matrix - to describe the state of systems.
- 1929 - one and a half year scientific trip to continue education in Berlin, Gottingen, Leipzig, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Zurich.
- Publication of a work on diamagnetism, which put him on a par with the world's leading physicists.
- March 1931 - return to homeland and work in Leningrad.
- August 1932 - transfer to Kharkov as head of the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (UPTI).
- 1933 - appointment as head of the department of theoretical physics at the Kharkov Mechanics and Engineering (now Polytechnic) Institute. Delivering a course of lectures at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics.
- 1934 - awarding L. D. Landau the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences without defending a dissertation.
- Conference on Theoretical Physics in Kharkov.
- Trip to Bohr's seminar in Copenhagen (May 1-22).
- Creation of a theoretical minimum - a special program for training young physicists.
- 1935 - teaching a course in physics at Kharkov State University, heading the department of general physics at KhSU.
- awarding the title of professor.
- 1936-1937 - creation of the theory of second-order phase transitions and the theory of the intermediate state of superconductors.
- 1937 - transfer to work at the Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow (February 8).
- appointment as head of the theoretical department of the IPP.
- 1938 - arrest (April 27)
- 1939 - release from prison thanks to the intervention of P. L. Kapitsa (April 29).
- 1940 - 1941 - creation of the theory of superfluidity of liquid helium.
- 1941 - Creation of the theory of quantum liquid.
- 1943 - awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.
- 1945 - awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
- 1946, November 30 - election as a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
- Award of the Stalin Prize.
- 1946 - creation of the theory of electron plasma oscillations (“Landau damping”).
- 1948 - publication of “Lecture Course on General Physics” (MSU Publishing House).
- 1949 - awarded the Stalin Prize, awarded the Order of Lenin.
- 1950 - construction of the theory of superconductivity (together with V.L. Ginzburg).
- 1951 - election as a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences.
- 1953 - awarded the Stalin Prize.
- 1954 - awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
- publication (together with A. A. Abrikosov, I. M. Khalatnikov) of the fundamental work “Fundamentals of Electrodynamics”.
- 1955 - publication of “Lectures on the theory of the atomic nucleus” (together with Ya. A. Smorodinsky).
- 1956 - election as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.
- 1957 - creation of the Fermi liquid theory.
- 1959 - L. D. Landau proposes the principle of combined parity.
- 1960 - election as a member of the British Physical Society, the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- Award of the Fritz London Prize.
- awarding the Max Planck Medal (Germany).
- 1962 - car accident on the road to Dubna (January 7)
- Lenin Prize for a series of books on theoretical physics (together with E.M. Lifshitz) (April).
- Nobel Prize in Physics “For pioneering work in the field of the theory of condensed matter, especially liquid helium.” Awarded on November 1, 1962. The Nobel Prize Laureate Medal, diploma and check were presented to Landau on December 10 (for the first time in the history of the Nobel Prizes, the award ceremony took place in a hospital).
- awarded the Order of Lenin
- 1968, April 1, 21 hours 50 minutes - Lev Davidovich Landau died a few days after the operation.
Landau School. Theorem minimum
Physicists who were able to pass Lev Davidovich (and subsequently his students) 9 theoretical exams, the so-called Landau theoretical minimum, were considered Landau’s students. First, mathematics was taken, and then physics exams:
Two math exams
- Mechanics
- field theory
- quantum mechanics
- statistical physics
- continuum mechanics
- electrodynamics of continuous media
- quantum electrodynamics
Landau required his students to know the fundamentals of all branches of theoretical physics.
After the war, the best way to prepare for exams was to use the theoretical physics course of Landau and Lifshitz, but the first students took exams using Landau’s lectures or handwritten notes. The first of those who passed the Landau Landau theoretical minimum were:
Alexander Solomonovich Kompaneets (1933)
- Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshits (1934)
- Alexander Ilyich Akhiezer (1935)
- Isaac Yakovlevich Pomeranchuk (1935)
- Leonid Moiseevich Pyatigorsky (passed the theoretical minimum fifth, but is not listed on the list provided by Landau)
- Laszlo Tissa (1935)
- Veniamin Grigorievich Levich (1937)
So said Landau
In addition to science, Landau is known as a joker. His contribution to scientific humor is quite large. Possessing a subtle, sharp mind and excellent eloquence, Landau in every possible way encouraged humor in his colleagues. He gave birth to the term Landau said so, and also became the hero of various humorous stories. It is typical that jokes are not necessarily related to physics and mathematics.
Landau had his own classification of women. According to Landau, girls are divided into beautiful, pretty and interesting.
Landau in culture
In 1972, Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh discovered asteroid 2142, which was named after him in honor of Lev Davidovich.
There is also a crater on the Moon called Landau, named after the scientist:
- Landau (English: Landau) is a crater on the far side of the Moon.
- The crater has a smoothed shaft, no terraces, a shaft, many slides at the bottom, a chain, an uneven bottom, lava at the bottom, does not have a ray system, is located on the mainland.
Coordinates: 42.2° N. w. 119.4° W d.
- Diameter: 225 km
- Eponym: Landau, Lev Davidovich (1908-1968) - Soviet theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.
- SAI index: 31
Landauite is a mineral from the crichtonite group, discovered in 1966, named after Landau.
In 2008, the television company “Rhythm TV” produced the film “My Husband is a Genius,” which was harshly criticized by people who knew Landau, in particular Academician Vitaly Ginzburg, who was personally acquainted with Lev Landau, called the film “simply disgusting, deceitful.”
In 2008, filming of the multi-part feature film “Dau” began (in Kharkov, Moscow and St. Petersburg). Completion of work on the film is planned for early 2010.
Bibliography
On the theory of spectra of diatomic molecules // Ztshr. Phys. 1926. Bd. 40. S. 621.
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- The second law of thermodynamics and the Universe // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1933. Bd. 4. S. 114. (Collaborated with A. Bronstein.)
- Possible explanation of the field dependence of susceptibility at low temperatures // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1933. Bd. 4. S. 675.
- Internal temperature of stars // Nature. 1933. V. 132. P. 567. (Collaborated with G. Gamov.)
- Structure of an unshifted scattering line // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1934. Bd. 5. S. 172. (Jointly with G. Plachen.)
- On the theory of braking of fast electrons by radiation // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1934. Bd. 5. S. 761; JETP. 1935. T. 5. P. 255.
- On the formation of electrons and positrons in the collision of two particles // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1934. Bd. 6. S. 244. (Collaborated with E.M. Lifshits.)
- Towards the theory of heat capacity anomalies // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 113.
- On the theory of dispersion of magnetic permeability of ferromagnetic bodies // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 153. (Collaborated with E.M. Lifshits.)
- On relativistic corrections to the Schrödinger equation in the many-body problem // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 487.
- To the theory of the coefficient of accommodation // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1935. Bd. 8. S. 489.
- Towards the theory of photoelectromotive force in semiconductors // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1936. Bd. 9. S. 477. (Collaborated with E.M. Lifshits.)
- Towards the theory of sound dispersion // Phys. Ztshr. SOW. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 34. (Collaborated with E. Teller.)
- Towards the theory of monomolecular reactions // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 67.
- Kinetic equation in the case of Coulomb interaction // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 203; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 154.
- On the properties of metals at very low temperatures // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 379; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1936. Bd. 10. S. 649. (Jointly with I. Ya. Pomeranchuk.)
- Scattering of light by light // Nature. 1936. V. 138. R. 206. (Collaborated with A. I. Akhiezer and I. Ya. Pomeranchuk.)
- On sources of stellar energy // DAN USSR. 1937. T. 17. P. 301; Nature. 1938. V. 141. R. 333.
- On the absorption of sound in solids // Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1937. Bd. 11. S. 18. (Collaborated with Yu. B. Rumer.)
- Towards the theory of phase transitions. I // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 19; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1937. Bd. 7. S. 19.
- Towards the theory of phase transitions. II // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 627; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1937. Bd. 11. S. 545.
- On the theory of superconductivity // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 371; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1937. Bd. 7. S. 371.
- On the statistical theory of nuclei // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 819; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1937. Bd. 11. S. 556.
- Scattering of X-rays by crystals near the Curie point // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 1232; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1937. Bd. 12. S. 123.
- Scattering of X-rays by crystals with variable structure // JETP. 1937. T. 7. P. 1227; Phys. Ztshr. Sow. 1937. Bd. 12. S. 579.
- Formation of showers by heavy particles // Nature. 1937. V. 140. P. 682. (Collaborated with Yu. B. Rumer.)
- Stability of neon and carbon with respect to a-decay // Phys. Rev. 1937. V. 52. P. 1251.
- Cascade theory of electron showers // Pros. Roy. Soc. 1938. V. A166. P. 213. (Collaborated with Yu. B. Rumer.)
- About the de Haas-van Alphen effect // Pros. Roy. Soc. 1939. V. A170. P. 363. Appendix to the article by D. Shen-Schoenberg.
- On the polarization of electrons during scattering // DAN USSR. 1940. T. 26. P. 436; Phys. Rev. 1940. V. 57. P. 548.
- On the “radius” of elementary particles // JETP. 1940. T. 10. P. 718; J. Phys. USSR. 1940. V. 2. P. 485.
- On the scattering of mesotrons by “nuclear forces” // JETP. 1940. T. 10. P. 721; J. Phys. USSR. 1940. V. 2. P. 483.
- Angular distribution of particles in showers // JETP. 1940. T. 10. P. 1007; J. Phys. USSR. 1940. V. 3. P. 237.
- Theory of superfluidity of helium-II // JETP. 1941. T. 11. P. 592
- Towards the theory of secondary showers // JETP. 1941. T. 11. P. 32; J. Phys. USSR. 1941. V. 4. P. 375.
- On the hydrodynamics of helium-II // JETP. 1944. T. 14. P. 112
- Theory of helium-II viscosity // JETP. 1949. T. 19. P. 637
- What is the theory of relativity. // Publishing house “Soviet Russia”, Moscow 1975 3rd edition expanded (Together with Yu. B. Rumer)
- Physics for everyone // M. Mir. 1979. (Collaborated with A.I. Kitaygorodsky.)
Biographical publications
Abrikosov, A. A. Academician L. D. Landau: brief biography and review of scientific works. - M.: Nauka, 1965. - 46 p.: portrait.
- Abrikosov, A. A., Khalatnikov, I. M. Academician L. D. Landau // Physics at school. - 1962. - N 1. - P. 21-27.
- Academician Lev Davidovich Landau: Collection. - M: Knowledge, 1978. - (New in life, science, technology. Ser. Physics; N 3).
- Academician Lev Davidovich Landau [on his fiftieth birthday] // Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. - 1958. - T.34. - P.3-6.
- Academician Lev Landau - Nobel laureate [brief chronological overview] // Science and life. - 1963.- N 2. - P.18-19.
- Akhiezer, A.I. Lev Davidovich Landau // Ukrainian Physical Journal. - 1969. - T.14, N 7. - P.1057-1059.
- Bessarab, M. Ya. Landau: Pages of Life. - 2nd ed. - M.: Mosk.rabochiy, 1978. - 232 p.: ill.
- Bessarab, M. Ya. Landau’s Formula of Happiness (Portraits). - M.: Terra-kn. club, 1999. - 303 pp. - Bibliography: pp. 298-302.
- Bessarab, M. Ya. That's what Landau said. - M.: Fizmatlit. 2004. - 128 p.
- Boyarintsev, V.I. Jewish and Russian scientists. Myths and reality. - M.: Fary-V, 2001. - 172 p.
- Vasiltsova, Z. Pedagogy of creativity [about L. D. Landau] // Young Communist. - 1971. - N 5. - P.88-91.
- Memories of L. D. Landau / Rep. ed. I. M. Khalatnikov. - M.: Nauka, 1988. - 352 pp.: ill.
- Around Landau (electronic collections) / IIET RAS, 2008
- Ginzburg, V.L. Lev Landau - Teacher and scientist // Moskovsky Komsomolets. - 1968. - January 18.
- Ginzburg, V.L. Lev Davidovich Landau // Advances in Physical Sciences. - 1968. - T.94, N 1. - P.181-184.
- Golovanov, Ya. Life among formulas. Academician L. D. Landau is 60 years old // Komsomolskaya Pravda. - 1968. - January 23.
- Gorelik G. E. The Soviet life of Lev Landau. Moscow: Vagrius, 2008, 463 pp., 61 illus.
- Gorobets, B. S. Landau Circle // Network almanac “Jewish Antiquity”, 2006-2007.
- Grashchenkov, N. I. How the life of Academician L. D. Landau was saved // Nature. - 1963. - N 3. - P.106-108.
- Grashchenkov, N. I. The wonderful victory of Soviet doctors [about the struggle for the life of the physicist L. D. Landau] // Ogonyok. - 1962. - N 30. - P. 30.
- A long time ago... [L. D. Landau is one of the founders of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Moscow] // Ogonyok. - 1996. - N 50. - P.22-26.
- Danin, D. It just happened... // The Art of Cinema. - 1973.- N 8. - P.85-87.
- Danin, D. Partnership [about the struggle to save the life of L. D. Landau] // Literary newspaper. - 1962. - July 21.
- Zeldovich, Ya. B. Encyclopedia of Theoretical Physics [for the award of the 1962 Lenin Prize to L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshits] // Nature. - 1962. - N 7. - P.58-60.
- Kaganov, M.I. Landau - as I knew him // Nature. - 1971. - N 7. - P.83-87.
- Kaganov, M.I. Landau School: what I think about it. - Troitsk: Trovant, 1998. - 359 p.
- Kassirsky, I. A. The triumph of heroic therapy // Health. - 1963. - N 1. - P.3-4.
- Kravchenko, V. L. L. D. Landau - Nobel Prize laureate // Science and technology. - 1963. - N 2. - P. 16-18.
- Landau-Drobantseva, K. Academician Landau: How we lived. - M.: Zakharov, 2000. - 493 p.
- Lev Davidovich Landau [on his fiftieth birthday] // Advances in Physical Sciences. - 1958. - T.64, issue 3. - P.615-623.
- Lenin Prize 1962 in the field of physical sciences [to the award of the prize to L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshits] // Physics at school. - 1962. - N 3. - P.7-8.
- Livanova, Anna. Landau. - M.: Knowledge, 1983.
- Lifshits, E. M. Landau’s living speech // Science and life. - 1971. - N 9. - P.14-22.
- Lifshits, E. M. History and explanations of superfluidity of liquid helium [to the 60th anniversary of Academician L. D. Landau] // Nature. - 1968. - N 1. - P.73-81.
- Lifshits, E. M. Lev Davidovich Landau // Advances in physical sciences. - 1969. - T.97, N 4. - P.169-186.
- Masters of eloquence: [about the oratory art of L. D. Landau]. - M.: Knowledge, 1991.
- Scientific creativity of L. D. Landau: Collection. - M.: Knowledge, 1963.
- Rolov, Bruno. Academician Landau // Science and technology. - 1968. - N 6. - P. 16-20.
- Rumer, Yu. Pages of memories of L. D. Landau // Science and life. - 1974. - N 6. - P.99-101.
- Tamm, I. E., Abrikosov, A. A., Khalatnikov, I. M. L. D. Landau - Nobel Prize Laureate 1962 // Bulletin of the USSR Academy of Sciences. - 1962. - N 12. - P.63-67.
- Tsypenyuk, Yu. Discovery of “Dry Water” [on the study of the properties of helium by P. L. Kapitsa and L. D. Landau] // Science and Life. - 1967. - N 3. - P.40-45.
- Yu. I. Krivonosov, Landau and Sakharov in the developments of the KGB, Komsomolskaya Pravda. August 8, 1992.
- Shalnikov A.I. Our Dau [for the award of the Nobel Prize to the Soviet physicist L.D. Landau] // Culture and life. - 1963. - No. 1. - P. 20-23.
- Shubnikov, L.V. Selected works. Memories. - Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1990.
- Around Landau. Materials for the 100th anniversary of the birth of L. D. Landau. Part 1. Memories. Department of History of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, IIET RAS. 2008. 117 p. The collection includes memories of L. D. Landau, published in various electronic journals in the last decade.
A SECRET STAFF NEXT TO ACADEMICIAN LANDAU
Could the KGB have its informants in the inner circle of an outstanding Soviet physicist?
Boris Gorobets
About the author: Boris Solomonovich Gorobets - Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Professor of the Moscow State University of Environmental Engineering.
Sexot is a secret employee. This was once the name given to assistants to state security agencies and their freelance employees. The term is initially not at all offensive, with a touch of romantic mystery. But the people, in general, did not respect them and were colloquially called informers. Before moving on to the main topic, a little background is needed.
KNIGHTS OF THE SPHERICAL Puff
One of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Nobel laureate Academician Lev Davidovich Landau (1908-1968) led a group of theorists in the late 1940s and early 1950s who carried out fantastically complex calculations of nuclear and thermonuclear chain reactions in the projected hydrogen bomb. It is known that the main theoretician in the Soviet atomic bomb project was Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, later Igor Evgenievich Tamm, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg were involved in the hydrogen bomb project (I here name only those scientists whose participation was decisive, without detracting from the enormous contributions of dozens of other outstanding scientists and designers).
Much less is known about the participation of Landau and his group, which included Evgeniy Mikhailovich Lifshits, Naum Natanovich Meiman and other employees. Meanwhile, recently in the leading American popular science magazine Scientific American (1997, # 2), in an article by Gennady Gorelik, it was stated that Landau’s group managed to do something that was beyond the capabilities of the Americans. Our scientists gave a complete calculation of the basic model of a hydrogen bomb, the so-called spherical layer, in which layers with nuclear and thermonuclear explosives alternated - the explosion of the first shell created a temperature of millions of degrees necessary to ignite the second. The Americans were unable to calculate such a model and postponed the calculations until the advent of powerful computers. Ours calculated everything manually. And they calculated correctly. In 1953, the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb was detonated. Its main creators, including Landau, became Heroes of Socialist Labor. Many others were awarded Stalin Prizes (including Landau's student and closest friend Evgeniy Lifshits).
Naturally, all participants in the projects for the production of atomic and hydrogen bombs were under the close control of the special services. Especially leading scientists. It couldn't be any other way. Now it’s even somehow inconvenient to recall the well-known story of how the Americans literally “wasted” their atomic bomb. This refers to the German emigrant, physicist Klaus Fuchs, who worked for Soviet intelligence and gave our bomb drawings, which sharply accelerated the work on its production. It is much less known that the Soviet spy Margarita Konenkova (the wife of the famous sculptor) worked for our intelligence service... in bed with Albert Einstein, being for a number of years the lover of the brilliant physicist. Since Einstein did not actually participate in the American atomic project, she could not report anything of real value. But, again, one cannot help but admit that the Soviet state security, in principle, acted absolutely correctly, covering potential sources of important information with its seksots.
CASE OF LANDAU
In principle, it could not be otherwise in the case of Landau, or rather, even more so with Landau, a man who spent a year in an NKVD prison on charges of producing a leaflet (it was written in an anti-Stalinist spirit, but from the perspective of Marxism). He was released only thanks to the heroic efforts of Academician Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, who achieved consent to this, apparently, at the level of Stalin himself. Landau and his employees, of course, were aware that they were under the constant control of the authorities. They even suspected that some of the theoretical physicists were working on the organs.
And now, many years later, two sources of information appeared in the open press that could shed light on the key question: who could have been a sexot under the academician. The proposed solution turns out to be trivial and at the same time unexpected.
The first of the sources is an article in the magazine “Historical Archive” (1993, # 3) entitled “According to agents and operational equipment. Information from the KGB of the USSR about Academician L.D. Landau.” The certificate is marked “Top Secret”. It was issued at the request of the head of the Science Department of the CPSU Central Committee V.A. Kirillin in 1957.
The second source of information is the book of Landau’s wife Concordia Terentyevna Landau-Drobantseva “Academician Landau. How We Lived” (Moscow, 1999, ed. Zakharov AST).
Reading both sources together gives an amazing “assemblage effect.” I’m not going to force this “decision” on anyone or even name the main character or heroine of this note. And therefore, let those who are “lazy in mind and wait for such prophecies so that everything coincides, right down to names and patronymics,” forgive me. I will try to objectively present the available facts in the form of documents and evidence, and let the reader draw his own conclusions.
ACCORDING TO KGB DATA
Here are a few paragraphs from the KGB certificate (syntax preserved):
The first quote from the denunciations is dated 1947.
“...We don’t understand science and don’t like it, which is not surprising, since it is led by mechanics, carpenters, joiners...”
From a denunciation dated November 1956: “...Lenin also had a face full of fluff. Let us remember the Kronstadt uprising...”
To the question: “So this idea is vicious?” - Landau replied: “Of course.”
The certificate further states: “This type of reasoning has been repeatedly recorded by several agents.” In July-September 1953, according to intelligence reports, Landau made slanderous statements against party and government leaders regarding the exposure of Beria's enemy activities. Subsequently, Landau, in a conversation with another agent, said that his opinion on this issue was wrong." "Since October 1953, agents have noted Landau's positive statements about the policies of the CPSU and the Soviet government..."
The certificate states: “Landau spends most of his time at home, regularly listens to foreign radio broadcasts and, receiving numerous visitors, transmits their anti-Soviet content.” “Landau’s intention to go abroad, according to agents and operational equipment, is strongly fueled by his entourage, in particular, Professor E.M. Lifshits.”
“One of the people closest to Landau on the issue of his trip abroad in 1957 said: “... it would be imprudent to allow Landau to travel abroad, since one cannot be sure that he will return. He is certainly not attached to his family, and his attachment to his son does not give the impression of a father's deep affection. He communicates little with him and thinks more about his mistresses than about his son..."
So, from the short fragments of denunciations and the accompanying text of the certificate, it is documented that there were agents under Landau, and one of them was “one of the persons closest to Landau.” He characterized Landau's family relations and expressed fears that Landau might not return from abroad to his family, to his son. He had the opportunity to observe Landau's behavior at home, his listening to foreign radio, and his conversations with visitors.
Of course, one can theoretically assume that there were no agents, that only listening equipment was working, and that the top-secret KGB certificate reports about the alleged existence of agents specifically, for provocative purposes. (In a provocative manner addressed to whom - the department of the Central Committee to which the certificate was sent?) I note this possibility, recently expressed by one of Landau’s students. But according to the canons of the operational work of all intelligence services, one equipment is clearly not enough, since a very large information field in space and time around the object of observation remains uncovered (for example, in the sphere of intimate communication of the object, his conversations in whispers, gestures, notes, during walks, etc. .) Serious cover-up necessarily requires the use of the most reliable and cheapest means - people. Therefore, let's immediately reject the naive assumption that the MGB-KGB relied only on equipment.
OUTSIDE THE PARTY, OUTSIDE THE Komsomol
Let me note one more interesting detail. The certificate does not mention the position of Landau’s wife anywhere: neither for nor against, as if she did not exist at all. Meanwhile, from the next most important literary source, the book of Cora Landau, we learn that conversations between Landau and his wife were ongoing and a wide range of issues were discussed that could be of great interest to the MGB-KGB: political topics, and personal characteristics of Landau’s friends and employees, including , of course, and dirt on them.
And now here is an extensive excerpt from the book by Cora Landau-Drobantseva (see pp. 283-284):
“Once I went into Dau’s ward - Grashchenkov (professor of medicine who supervised Landau’s treatment after the car accident that happened on January 7, 1962 - B.G.) was finishing his examination of Landau.
Korusha, how I waited for you, how much trouble I caused you with my illness. And when I found you in Kharkov, I so dreamed of giving you a happy life. Do you remember how you persuaded me in Kharkov to join the Communist Party. By my convictions, I have always been a Marxist. Korusha, now I have decided to join the Communist Party.
Grashchenkov's eyes widened.
Dawnka, you get well first.
No, Korusha, I have finally decided to join the Communist Party. You always wanted this.
Dow, now I have one dream for you to become healthy.
The crust, of course, I'll get better first.
I remembered that in Kharkov I really wanted Dau to become a communist, in those distant young Komsomol years I had a firm conviction: only small people like Zhenya Lifshits, alien to our Soviet ideology, should remain outside the party, outside the Komsomol, this was in the early thirties ".
It is known that Kora’s book was received sharply negatively by many physicists who knew its heroes closely during their lifetime: academicians Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg, Lev Petrovich Pitaevsky and Evgeniy Lvovich Feinberg, professors Moses Isakovich Kaganov and Yakov Lvovich Alpert, referent of Pyotr Kapitsa and director of his museum Pavel Evgenievich Rubinin (I listed here only those whose opinions I reliably know).
One way or another, it seems to me that even the just cited excerpt from Kora’s memoirs is a valuable document, providing the most direct evidence possible of the ideological (in the Soviet sense of the word) attitude of the person closest to Landau. Elsewhere in the book it is mentioned that Kora “was even hired as an instructor at the district party committee in Kazan in 1943.” And one more factual quote: “The secretary of the IFP party committee said: “Cora, you now have one very serious party burden - take care of your husband, our country really needs Landau” (p. 136).
So, everything is clear with vocal control: Cora had both strong motives and great opportunities for its implementation. Cora carried out a party assignment that was fully consistent with her ideological position and her enormous organizational abilities (this is evidenced by the material in her book). But, most importantly, her main vital interest is keeping Landau with her. But she could have lost him in the following cases: 1) Landau left abroad and did not return; 2) divorce her.
The first case is hypothetical, but became a little more real during the Khrushchev Thaw, when, for example, Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov himself traveled abroad (the report of a KGB agent about the inadmissibility of Landau traveling abroad coincides with this time). The second case is much more real (see Landau’s letter to his wife dated August 23, 1945 about his intention to divorce Cora; a copy of the letter was preserved by E.M. Lifshitz and published in the journal “Teaching Physics in Higher School” (2000, # 18).What about unspoken control?
MORAL MOTIVES
Can we assume that in the described case it simply did not occur to the authorities to resort to the most effective of the possible options - the “help” of Landau’s wife? Or that they would refrain from doing this for some reason, for example, ethical (!)? (Please note that I am only describing the situation, indirect evidence and documents, and identifying questions. It would be interesting to know the thoughts of our readers.) So, the version that Cora was never offered cooperation with the authorities seems to me absolutely incredible. (What this was done and how it was done in relation to other people who were part of Landau’s entourage, although they stood further away from him, see below). So, we can only assume that Cora resolutely rejected such a proposal. For purely moral reasons, for example. If anyone wants to think that way...
Moral motives are a delicate matter. Of course, they must be taken into account when constructing a logical circuit. Therefore, we present the following striking fact, which speaks specifically about the moral side of relationships in the Landau family. It is attested by such authoritative people as academicians V.L. Ginzburg, E.M. Lifshits, Yu.M. Kagan, writer and journalist Yaroslav Golovanov. I will quote Yaroslav Golovanov: “After the disaster, Cora Landau was never in the hospital for about a month (according to the physicists and medical staff on duty, about two months - B.G.), because she believed that Landau would die anyway. Not his son Igor also came to the hospital. Dau, along with the doctors, was nursed by physicists. Kagan was one of the permanent attendants in the hospital. Most of all, Lifshitz was involved in Dau’s treatment, whom Cora hated... and understood that if Landau regained consciousness, then Lifshitz would rights of an old friend will open his eyes to Cora." (Komsomolskaya Pravda, March 2, 2000).
And here is evidence of how recruitment (in this case unsuccessful) took place at that time in order to obtain operational information about Landau and Lifshits. The following fragment was written by my mother, Zinaida Ivanovna Gorobets-Lifshits (last name after her first husband - Ratner).
“In May 1952, in the seventh year of my work as head of the library of the Institute of Physical Problems (IPP) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, I was suddenly given a summons to appear at the personnel department of the USSR Academy of Sciences. At first I was simply surprised: why would I be needed there, but then I became alarmed. Various rumors circulated among acquaintances about this institution. My premonition was justified. The head of the personnel department (I remembered his last name - Yakovenko) kindly met me in his office and instantly disappeared. At the same time, two people unfamiliar to me came out of two different doors, as I guessed, employees MGB, sat down at the table, they sat me opposite and began to ask questions. They asked if I went to the Riga seaside in a car in the early summer of 1951 with E.M. Lifshitz (E.M.). I answered that yes, together with E.M. and A.I. Shalnikov for two weeks at the dacha, which was rented by the Shalnikov family. When asked why E.M. Lifshits came with us, I answered what it was: he went to rent a dacha for his family, stayed there for four days and left for Moscow. Let me explain that, starting in 1948, we actually spent an annual vacation together with my future second husband E.M. Lifshits. At the same time, my then husband S.B. Ratner, and wife E.M. Lifshitsa E.K. Berezovskaya knew about this and perceived the current situation as reality. I don’t want to dwell now on the details of the personal lives of either ours or our then spouses. Moreover, it would take away from the main theme of the story. This is how our life turned out in those years. It is important to note that in the summer of 1952, together with us and E.M. Landau also traveled south. So, I will continue my retelling of the episode.
When asked if my husband knew about this trip, I replied that, of course, he did. After this, vague questions began with hints that they needed some kind of help from me. I immediately understood what kind of “help” this was and made a firm decision not to agree to anything. But she pretended that I didn’t have enough intelligence and asked what kind of help we were talking about. They would never tell me directly what my “help” should be. Finally, I got tired of this verbal duel and told them directly that I had an epiphany - I guessed it. Immediately they had a “death grip” on me so that I would tell them what I had guessed. But I replied that if they do not want to tell me directly what they expect from me, then I have the right not to tell them about my guess.
Threats began, they said that it would be bad for me, my husband and children if I did not agree to help them. But I didn't give up. Finally, they, too, got tired of “pounding water in a mortar,” and they put in front of me a page of printed text about my refusal, that I would never tell anyone where I was and what the conversation was about.
Thank God, the hour and a half “conversation” came to an end, and I promised not to tell anyone except my husband about it. I deliberately told them that I would consult with my husband (and, by the way, I did this on the same day, and then I also told E.M. about it, from whom Landau later learned about this recruitment attempt). I wanted to somehow “repay” for their provocative question about my husband, asked at the beginning of the conversation, to make it clear that their blackmail would not work here. When I uttered these words, one of the MGB officers again began to threaten me and my entire family. But I stood my ground: supposedly I don’t understand why I can’t consult my husband about such a significant event, from whom, in principle, I don’t have anything that I couldn’t discuss with him. In the end, I signed the proposed document refusing to disclose the contents of this conversation.
Punishment for refusal to cooperate followed quickly. When academician Anatoly Petrovich Aleksandrov (director of the IPP at the time when P.L. Kapitsa was in disgrace) returned to the institute after a summer vacation, he called me to his place. Very gently and sympathetically, he said that he was forced to fire me, since for reasons unknown to him they could not give me the “secret form” that is now required for the manager. library (?!). And he even promised to help in finding a new job. In the fall of 1952, I was fired from the Institute of Physical Problems. This was right at the height of the Doctors' Plot, and work was hard to find. But here I was lucky; I didn’t remain without work for long. I was offered a new job by the secretary of the party bureau of the Central Library of the USSR Academy of Sciences (her last name was Orlova, but I don’t remember her initials), she was known as a very responsive person. Orlova offered me the position of manager. Library of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In response to my question about whether classification is required there too, she waved her hand and said that it was not required. In January 1953, I started working at the Institute of Ethnography.
LANDAU
IN AND. Boyarintsev
In S.A. Friedman's book "Jews - Nobel Prize Laureates", in particular, it is written: "Landau Lev Davidovich (1908-1968) - theoretical physicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor." And the “Pocket Jewish Encyclopedia” (edited by Mikhail Chlenov, Rostov-on-Don, “Phoenix”, 1999) says that the surname Landau comes from the name of a city in Lorraine.
Further brief biographical information is drawn from the two-volume book by A.N. Shchukin “The Most Famous People of Russia” (M., “Veche”, 1999), the collection by K. Ryzhov “One Hundred Great Russians” (M., “Veche”, 2000), the collection D.K. Samin “One Hundred Great Scientists” (Moscow, “Veche”, 2000) and from the book by Cora Landau-Drobantseva “Academician Landau (How We Lived)”, Moscow, 2000. The diminutive names used below are also taken from the latter and nicknames.
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
Lev Landau was born into a wealthy Jewish family of oil engineer David Lvovich Landau. His parents were widely educated people and paid a lot of attention to raising their children. Little Lev and his older sister Sophia had a French governess; teachers of music, rhythm and drawing came to the house. But Lev's only passion from early childhood was mathematics.
Landau did not have time to graduate from high school - the revolution interfered, and after the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan in 1920, he entered the Baku Commercial School, in 1922 he passed the exams at Baku University, from where in 1924 he transferred to the physics and mathematics department of Leningrad University.
In 1927, he presented the article “On the Theory of Spectra of Diatomic Molecules” as his thesis and entered graduate school at the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology.
From 1929 to 1931, Landau was on a scientific trip to Germany, England, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark.
There he met the founders of the new quantum mechanics, of whom Niels Bohr had the strongest influence on him.
"In 1931 he headed the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkov. In 1934, the USSR Academy of Sciences awarded him the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences without defending a dissertation. A year later he was already a professor. Thanks to Landau and his student and colleague Evgeniy Lifshits, Kharkov became a leading scientific center" ("Jews - Nobel Prize Laureates").
“In communication, Landau was a very rough, unyielding and in many ways inconvenient person. According to Ginzburg, “he had plenty of enemies...” Landau was fired from his job “for pushing through bourgeois attitudes in his lectures” (“One Hundred Great Russians”).
But at the beginning of 1937 he was invited to Moscow, where he began to work at the Institute of Physical Problems under Pyotr Kapitsa, and in the spring of 1938, together with two young physicists, he wrote a leaflet that began with the words: “Comrades! The great cause of the October Revolution has been basely betrayed... "...As Landau later admitted, the leaflet was intended for distribution on May 1, but caught the eye of Moscow security officers several weeks before the holiday. In April 1938, Landau and his friends were arrested.
Pyotr Kapitsa sent a letter asking Stalin personally to release Landau. Trying to justify his ward, he admitted his shortcomings: “...One should take into account Landau’s character, which, simply put, is bad. He is a bully and a bully, he loves” to look for mistakes in others, and when he finds them, especially in important elders, then begins to tease irreverently. By this he has made? many enemies...” ("One Hundred Great Russians").
In November, Niels Bohr also wrote a letter to JV Stalin. In April 1939, Landau was released on personal guarantee from Kapitsa.
Together with P.L. Kapitsa, Landau conducts research into the emergence of superfluidity.
"Superfluidity is a complex of physical phenomena that take place in liquid helium at very low temperatures close to absolute zero. In liquid helium cooled to 2.18 degrees Kelvin, an abrupt change in properties occurs..." ("Small Soviet Encyclopedia").
This physical phenomenon was discovered by P.L. Kapitsa in 1938, and he began these studies at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge (England) with the creation in 1934 of an installation for liquefying helium. In 1978, Kapitsa became a Nobel laureate "for fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low temperature physics."
In 1940-1941, Landau worked on the creation of the theory of superfluidity of liquid helium and the theory of quantum liquid, later completed work on the creation of the theory of electron plasma oscillations, and took part in the creation of the atomic bomb in the USSR.
In 1935, together with E.M. Lifshitz, he created a physics course, which was revised and republished for a number of years, for which the authors were awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962.
In 1940, Landau married Concordia (Kora) Drobantseva. “Only after this did he find himself surrounded by comfort and attention, which he had not had for many years of his bachelor life. In general, Landau was surprisingly indifferent to everyday trifles, primarily to clothes and food...Only after the wedding, when his wife began to order him suits from the best tailors, he is used to expensive and elegant things..." ("One Hundred Great Russians").
Landau's scientific activities in subsequent years were associated with the Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems. In 1946, he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences (bypassing the stage of corresponding member).
His wife describes her impressions of Landau’s election as an academician: “I didn’t feel any joy. For the first time I felt the fear of losing him. So many young, beautiful girls are cool, but I have a disease - my legs can’t walk...”
In the 40s, Landau resumed his teaching activities.
"...Almost all of Landau's works were written in collaboration, this was his peculiarity; having excellent command of oral speech, he put his thoughts on paper with great difficulty. It is known that even those articles that were published under his name were written for him by Lifshits ..." ("One Hundred Great Russians").
“The first decade after the war, life was rushing. Everyone was in a hurry to live, catching up on lost time,” and Landau visited restaurants, because, in his words, “without a restaurant you can’t get a beautiful girl.” To which his wife remarked to him: “You always said that you like to go to the cinema with undeveloped girls.” The academician replied: “Cinemas are simply created to take untaught girls there! It’s so convenient to squeeze them there. But some girls don’t want to go to the cinema, they want to go to restaurants...”.
Due to health reasons, after a car accident, Landau was unable to travel to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, awarded “for the fundamental theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium.”
In addition to the Nobel and Lenin Prizes, Landau was awarded three Stalin Prizes, he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, the Max Planck Medal, and the Fritz London Prize.
DAU AND CORA ABOUT YOURSELF
Landau said (see his wife’s memoirs): “As a child, my father persistently instilled in me that nothing good could come of me. I was so afraid that he might turn out to be right! By doing this, he pretty much spoiled my childhood. I was really very lonely. As a teenager I was close to suicide."
Father - David Lvovich - "a high-class mining engineer", mother - Lyubov Veniaminovna - "a physician - physiologist, later a professor with her own works and name in her field of science." “In the family of the chief engineer of the oil fields of the city of Baku, Sonechka became her father’s daughter, and Levushka belonged entirely to her mother.”
Dau, who was your father?
He's boring. He still exists!
How boring?
Well, he's just the most boring bore, he's depressing
Cora wrote: “My father died of typhus in 1918. I was not yet eight years old! Convinced of my father’s death, my mother (Tatyana Ivanovna - V.B.) lost consciousness, blood began to flow from her throat. She lay motionless for a year Vera began a process in her lungs, and Nadya was four years old...”
Concordia Drobantseva studied at Kharkov University, in her last year she married her childhood friend, but “after six months I could hardly stand him... we separated without tragedy... .
At the graduation ceremony (1933) at the University I met Landau, who had already been teaching at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Kharkov University for two years. “He was stunning with the immediate clarity of a child and the maturity of his thinking, striving to unravel the secrets of nature through the most complex mathematical arguments, characteristic only of him, a true discoverer in science. I understood the latter many years later.”
After graduating from Concordia University, she worked in the chocolate shop of a confectionery factory, which taught her to do daily gymnastics to maintain her figure. “His words: “Korusha, what could be more beautiful than a beautiful young woman!” I always remembered them, they spurred me on, getting me up early in the morning in bed for grueling gymnastics, they led me onto the wrong road, they made me give a damn about public opinion! ".
While in Kharkov, Kora “really wanted Dau to become a communist, in those distant young Komsomol years I had a firm conviction: only small people like Zhenya Lifshits, alien to our Soviet ideology, should remain outside the party, outside the Komsomol. This was in the early thirties ".
Soon after meeting the question: “Why don’t you join the party?” Lev Landau replied: “They don’t like me. They won’t accept me. I only speak the truth, I’m not from the tribe of heroes, I have many shortcomings...”. In this regard, I recall an anecdote from the war years, when a political instructor, rising from a trench, shouted: “Forward, eagles!” To which two soldiers, remaining sitting in the trench, replied: “We are not eagles, we are lions - Lev Moiseevich and Lev Solomonovich! ".
“During my student life in Kharkov, I heard from a friend about Evgeny Lifshits. He was listed as a profitable groom...” He was the son of a famous medical professor, lived in a “chic mansion... where “every thing is an antique value.”
After Landau and Cora visited this mansion, when asked how she liked Zhenya, with whom Landau consulted “on all everyday issues,” Cora replied: “Danka, dear, could you really consult with this nit, like Do you need to kiss me?"
The affair lasted five years until Landau invited her to Moscow as his wife, although until that moment in matters of marriage he adhered to the following views: “The most beautiful word is “mistress.” It is covered in poetry, the root of this word is “love.” marriage. Marriage is a seal on bad things!"
Concordia Landau describes this event and some of the actions preceding it: “Korusha, I haven’t changed my views, but I haven’t seen you for a whole year. And now every day without you is a lost day! And the justification for marriage is that we were lovers for five years - a considerable period of time. And I am falling in love with you more and more. Hurry up, arrange your affairs and come to me in Moscow, already as a wife!
By this time, “he had carefully developed his most “brilliant” (so he said) theoretical work and called it “How to Live Rightly,” or “The Marriage Pact of Non-Aggression.” This “pact” provided complete freedom, as he understood it, for myself and for me. I couldn’t say no...".
At times Cora doubted, fearing that there was a “malicious human prejudice - jealousy” inside her. “In addition, there was one more trouble: that same Zhenya (Lifshits - V.B.), for whom one cannot have other feelings except contempt, got married and impudently settled with Dau in Moscow, in his five-room apartment. Together with his wife and housekeeper."
Landau’s sudden arrival in Kharkov destroyed all doubts, especially since Dau promised: “if you don’t like the fact that they live with us, then I will have a reason to evict them... In the meantime, they are very useful to me, they feed me.. ". The move to Moscow took place in 1940, and the Lifshits’ eviction took place about a year later. "When my son was born, I left my job. I had two babies in my arms. My son grew up, promising to become an adult, but Daunka was an eternal baby
CERENKOV EFFECT
In 1958, the Nobel Prize was awarded to three Soviet scientists - P.A. Cherenkov, I.M. Frank. and Tammu I.E. "for the discovery and interpretation of the Cherenkov effect." Sometimes in the literature this effect is called the “Cherenkov-Vavilov effect” (“Polytechnic Dictionary”, M., 1980).
It consists of the following: this is “light emission (other than luminescent) that occurs during the movement of charged particles in a substance when their speed exceeds the phase speed of light in this medium. It is used in charged particle counters (Cherenkov counters).” At the same time, a legitimate question arises: isn’t it strange that for the discovery of an effect one author and two interpreters of this discovery receive a prize? The answer to this question is contained in the book by Cora Landau-Drobantseva "Academician Landau".
“So I.E. Tamm, through the “fault” of Landau, received the Nobel Prize at the expense of Cherenkov: Dau received a request from the Nobel Committee regarding the “Cherenkov Effect” ...
A little information - Pavel Alekseevich Cherenkov, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1970, member of the bureau of the nuclear physics department, showed back in 1934 that when a fast charged particle moves in a completely pure liquid or solid dielectric, a special glow appears, fundamentally different from fluorescent glow, and from bremsstrahlung such as the continuous X-ray spectrum. In the 70s, P.A. Cherenkov worked at the Physical Institute. P.I.Lebedev Academy of Sciences of the USSR (FIAN).
“Dau explained to me this way: “It is unfair to give such a noble prize, which should be awarded to the outstanding minds of the planet, to one clumsy Cherenkov, who has not done anything serious in science. He worked in Frank-Kamenetsky's laboratory in Leningrad. His boss is a legal co-author. Their institute was advised by Muscovite I.E. Tamm. He simply needs to be added to the two legitimate candidates (emphasis mine - V.B.).
Let us add that, according to the testimony of students who listened to Landau’s lectures at that time, when asked the question: who is the number one physicist, he answered: “Tamm is the second.”
“You see, Korusha, Igor Evgenievich Tamm is a very good person. Everyone loves him, he does a lot of useful things for technology, but, to my great regret, all his works in science exist until I read them. If it weren’t for me "If it were, his mistakes would not have been discovered. He always agrees with me, but he is very upset. I have brought him too much grief in our short life. He is simply a wonderful person. Co-authorship of the Nobel Prize will simply make him happy."
When introducing the Nobel Prize winners, Manne Sigbahn, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, recalled that although Cherenkov "established the general properties of the newly discovered radiation, a mathematical description of this phenomenon was missing." The work of Tamm and Frank, he further said, provided "an explanation... which, in addition to simplicity and clarity, also satisfied strict mathematical requirements."
But back in 1905, Sommerfeld, in fact, even before Cherenkov’s discovery of this phenomenon, gave its theoretical prediction. He wrote about the occurrence of radiation when an electron moves in emptiness at superluminal speed. But due to the established opinion that the speed of light in vacuum cannot be exceeded by any material particle, this work of Sommerfeld was considered erroneous, although the situation when an electron moves faster than the speed of light in a medium, as Chereshkov showed, is quite possible.
Igor Evgenievich Tamm, apparently, did not feel satisfaction from receiving the Nobel Prize for the Cherenkov effect: “as Igor Evgenievich himself admitted, he would have been much more pleased to receive an award for another scientific result - the exchange theory of nuclear forces” (“One Hundred Great Scientists”). Apparently, the courage for such a recognition took its origins from his father, who “during the Jewish pogrom in Elizavetgrad... one went towards a crowd of Black Hundreds with a cane and dispersed it” (“One Hundred Great Scientists”).
“Subsequently, during Tamm’s lifetime, at one of the general meetings of the Academy of Sciences, one academician publicly accused him of unfairly appropriating someone else’s portion of the Nobel Prize.” (Cora Landau-Drobantseva).
The passages quoted above suggest a number of thoughts:
If we were to change the places of Landau and Cherenkov in this situation, talking about “Landau’s club,” this would be perceived as a manifestation of extreme anti-Semitism, but here we can talk about Landau as an extreme Russophobe.
Academician Landau behaves like a learned representative of God on earth, deciding who to reward for personal devotion to himself and who to punish.
Answering his wife’s question: “Would you agree to accept part of this prize, like Tamm?”, the academician said: “... firstly, all my real works do not have co-authors, and secondly, many of my works have long deserved the Nobel Prize a prize, thirdly, if I publish my works with co-authors, then this co-authorship is more necessary for my co-authors...".
In saying such words, the academician, as they now say, was somewhat disingenuous, as will be clear from what follows.
And another interesting episode described by Landau’s wife: “Dau, why did you expel Vovka Levich from your students? Did you quarrel with him forever? - Yes, I “anathematized” him. You see, I arranged for him to work with Frumkin, whom I considered honest scientist, he had done good work in the past. Vovka did a decent job on his own, I know. And in print this work appeared under the signatures of Frumkin and Levich, and Frumkin promoted Levich to a corresponding member. Some kind of bargaining took place. I also stopped saying hello to Frumkin ...".
If you try to combine the episode with the forced co-authorship on the “Cherenkov Effect” with the last episode of Frumkin-Levich, then the question arises whether Academician Landau was offended by “Vovka” for the fact that he received the title of corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from the hands of Frumkin, and not from Landau “himself”? Moreover, as can be seen from the comparison and from the texts cited here, Landau could not possibly be bothered by the problems of false co-authorship.
Landau said: "...When I die, then the Lenin Committee will definitely award the Lenin Prize posthumously...".
"Dau was awarded the Lenin Prize when he had not yet died, but was lying dying. But not for scientific discoveries. He was given Zhenya as a companion and was awarded the Lenin Prize for a course of books on theoretical physics, although this work was not completed then, there was not enough two volumes..."
Here, however, not all is well either. So, if we remember that when studying Marxism, three sources were spoken of, then in this case three sources of theoretical physics were widely used: the first was Whittaker’s “Analytical Dynamics”, published in Russian in 1937, the second was “Course of Theoretical Physics” "A. Sommerfeld, the third - "Atomic spectra and structure of the atom" by the same author.
LANDAU AND VLASOV
Last name Vlasov A.A. (1908-1975), Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, author of the dispersion equation on plasma theory, is difficult to find in general education literature, now a mention of this scientist has appeared in the new encyclopedia, somewhere in four to five lines.
In M. Kovrov’s article “Landau and others” (“Zavtra” No. 17, 2000), the author writes: “An article by leading experts in this field A.F. Alexandrov and A.A. Rukhadze was published in the reputable scientific journal “Plasma Physics” “On the history of fundamental works on the kinetic theory of plasma.” This history is as follows.
In the 30s, Landau derived the kinetic equation of plasma, which in the future was to be called the Landau equation. At the same time, Vlasov pointed out its incorrectness: it was derived under the assumption of the gas approximation, that is, that the particles are mostly in free flight and only occasionally collide, but “a system of charged particles is essentially not a gas, but a peculiar system pulled together by distant forces "; the interaction of a particle with all plasma particles through the electromagnetic fields they create is the main interaction, while the pair interactions considered by Landau should be taken into account only as small corrections.
I quote the mentioned article: “Vlasov was the first to introduce... the concept of the dispersion equation and found its solution,” “the results obtained with the help of this equation, including primarily by Vlasov himself, formed the basis of the modern kinetic theory of plasma,” Vlasov’s merits “are recognized the entire world scientific community, which approved in the scientific literature the name of the kinetic equation with a self-consistent field as the Vlasov equation. Every year hundreds and hundreds of works on plasma theory are published in the world scientific press, and in every second, at least, the name of Vlasov is pronounced."
“Only narrow specialists with a good memory remember the existence of the erroneous Landau equation.
However, write Aleksandrov and Rukhadze, even now “it is puzzling to see the appearance in 1949 (M. Kovrov notes below that this article actually dates back to 1946 - V.B.) of a work that sharply criticized Vlasov, moreover, essentially unfounded."
The bewilderment is caused by the fact that this work (authors V.L. Ginzburg, L.D. Landau, M.A. Leontovich, V.A. Fok) says nothing about N.N. Bogolyubov’s fundamental monograph of 1946, which by that time had received universal recognition and was often cited in the literature, where the Vlasov equation and its justification already appeared in the form in which it is known now."
“In the article by Aleksandrov and Rukhadze there are no excerpts from Ginzburg and others, but they are curious: “the use of the self-consistent field method” leads to conclusions that contradict the simple and indisputable consequences of classical statistics,” just below - “the use of the self-consistent field method leads (as we now we will show) to results, the physical irregularity of which is already visible in itself"; “We are leaving aside here the mathematical errors of A.A. Vlasov, which he made when solving equations and which led him to the conclusion about the existence of the “dispersion equation” (the same one that today is the basis of modern plasma theory). After all, if they brought these texts, then it turns out that Landau and Ginzburg do not understand the simple and indisputable consequences of classical physics, not to mention mathematics."
M. Kovrov says that Alexandrov and Rukhadze.! “they proposed to call the Vlasov equation the Vlasov-Landau equation. On the basis that Vlasov himself believed that the pair interactions considered by Landau, although as small corrections, should still be taken into account, completely forgetting about the persecution organized by Landau” of Vlasov. “And only an accidental car accident changed the situation: after Landau’s death in 1968, the general public saw the unknown name of Vlasov on the list of Lenin Prize laureates in 1970...”
The author also quotes from Landau: “Consideration of these works by Vlasov led us to the conviction of their complete inconsistency and the absence of any results in them! Having scientific value... no “dispersion equation exists.”
M. Kovrov writes: “In 1946, two of the authors of the devastating work directed against Vlasov were elected academicians, the third received the Stalin Prize. Ginzburg’s services will not be forgotten: later he will also become an academician and people’s deputy of the USSR from the USSR Academy of Sciences.”
Here again the question arises: if, say, Abramovich were in the place of Vlasov, and in the place of Ginzburg, Landau, Leontovich, Fock, say, Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov, Alekseev, then how would such persecution be perceived by the “progressive public”? The answer is simple - as a manifestation of extreme anti-Semitism and “inciting national hatred.”
M. Kovrov concludes: “...In 1946, an attempt was made to completely seize key positions in science by Jews, which led to its degradation and the almost complete destruction of the scientific environment...”.
However, by the 60s and 70s the situation had somewhat improved and it turned out that literate people sat on the committee for awarding the Lenin Prizes: Landau received the prize not for scientific achievements, but for the creation of a series of textbooks, and Vlasov for achievements in science!
But, as M. Kovrov notes, “The Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences is named after Landau, not Vlasov.” And this, as Jewish scientists like to say, is a medical fact!
Upon closer acquaintance with Academician Landau's attitude towards other people's works, an interesting detail becomes clear - he was very jealous and negative about other people's scientific achievements. So in 1957, for example, speaking at the physics department of Moscow State University, Landau said that Dirac had lost his understanding of theoretical physics, and his critical and ironic attitude towards the generally accepted theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus, developed by D.D. Ivanenko, was also widely known among theoretical physicists .
Note that Paul Dirac formulated the laws of quantum statistics and developed a relativistic theory of electron motion, on the basis of which the existence of a positron was predicted. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933 for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.
LANDAU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB
Cora Landau describes her husband's participation in the creation of the atomic bomb as follows: “That was the time when...Kurchatov headed this work. He had a powerful talent as an organizer. The first thing he did was make a list of the physicists he needed. The first on this list was L .D. Landau. In those years, only Landau alone could make a theoretical calculation for an atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. And he did it with great responsibility and with a clear conscience. He said: “America alone cannot be allowed to possess the weapon of the devil!” And yet, Dau was Dau! He set a condition for the powerful Kurchatov at that time: “I will calculate the bomb, I will do everything, but I will come to your meetings in extremely necessary cases. All my calculation materials will be brought to you by Doctor of Science Ya.B. Zeldovich, and Zeldovich will also sign my calculations. This is technology, and my calling is science."
As a result, Landau received one star of Hero of Socialist Labor, and Zeldovich and Sakharov received three each.”
And further: “A.D. Sakharov took up military technology, and he came up with the first hydrogen bomb to destroy humanity! A paradox arose - the author of the hydrogen bomb was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace! How can humanity combine a hydrogen bomb and peace?
Yes, A.D. Sakharov is very good, honest, kind, talented. All this is true! But why did the talented physicist exchange science for politics? When he created the hydrogen bomb, no one interfered in his affairs! Already in the second half of the seventies, I spoke with one talented physicist, academician, student of Landau: “Tell me: if Sakharov is one of the most talented theoretical physicists, why has he never visited Landau?” They answered me: “Sakharov is a student of I.E. Tamm. He, like Tamm, was engaged in technical calculations... But Sakharov and Landau have nothing to talk about, he is a physicist and technician, mainly worked on military equipment.”
What happened to Sakharov when he got this ill-fated bomb? His kind, subtle soul broke, and a psychological breakdown occurred. A kind, honest man ended up with an evil devil's toy. There is something to climb on the wall. And his wife, the mother of his children, died..."
DAU AND ZHENKA (LANDAU AND LIFSHITS)
Cora wrote: “Once I asked Dau: “Why do you write your volumes only with Zhenya...? - “Korusha,... I tried with others, but nothing worked... when I dictate my books on physics to Zhenya, he unquestioningly writes everything down. His brain is the brain of a competent clerk, he is not capable of independent creative thinking... Creative He did not turn out to be a worker, but he is educated, neat, precise and hardworking, he turned out to be a co-author. Instead of a salary, I give him my ideas, he needs to have his own face in society. Thanks to his help, I was able to create good books on physics for posterity. ..".
Here we are talking about Lifshits E.M. (1915-1985), academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1979 - Landau’s constant co-author. “To help his students, Landau in 1935 created a comprehensive course of theoretical physics, published by him and Lifshitz in the form of a series of textbooks, the content of which the authors revised and updated over the next twenty years...” (“One Hundred Great Scientists”).
And Cora continues: “In front of me, physicists (that’s how she calls Landau’s colleagues and students - V.B.) said at our house: “Dow, for the work that Zhenya does for you, you just have to express your gratitude to him in the preface of the next volume.” gratitude - this is what all our academics do - and not make him your co-author. After all, for his work he has a very generous payment - your ideas! And such that, look at it, they will soon end up as a member of the core."
Note: when the future academician E.M. Lifshits ran for corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Landau protested against the nomination, but Lifshits was elected.
“Students of the physics department of Moscow State University in those years said about the Landau-Lifshitz course of theoretical* physics: “In these books there is not a single word written by Landau’s hand, and there is not a single thought from Lifshitz.”
Lifshitz explained his many years of collaboration with Landau: “It was not easy for him to even write an article outlining his own (without co-authors!) scientific work, and all such articles were written for him by others over the course of many years...” (“One Hundred Great Scientists”) .
Cora wrote about the habits of Evgeniy Lifshits: “Evgeniy Mikhailovich inherited the habit of saving money from his father, a physician. When his sons grew up, their father said this: “Since the“ comrades ”destroyed private practice among us doctors, having made medical care in the Soviet Union free, my sons will become scientists."
Lev Davidovich Landau. Mafia in science: An example of bullying an engineer - I.M. Rapoport “Vibrations of an elastic shell partially filled with liquid”, M., 1967. “The book is intended for scientists and engineers.” Engineers, try to calculate something using these formulas!
“Dau always said: “Zhenya is not a physicist. His younger brother Ilya is a physicist." “I quote Dau’s words: “An amazing variety of the Lifshitz brothers. Zhenya is smart, he is vitally smart, but he has no talent. Absolutely incapable of creative thinking. Ilya is a fool in life, collects stamps, always following Zhenya’s lead since childhood, but is a very talented physicist. His independent work is brilliant."
“When Landau decided that Ilya Lifshits, based on his work, should become a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, he made every effort and Kharkov’s Ilya Lifshits was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
I quote Topchiev’s words: “As soon as the result of the vote for Ilya Lifshits was received, I approached Landau and asked: “Lev Davidovich, in the next elections we will probably elect Lifshits’s older brother?”
Lev Davidovich laughed and said: “No, Alexander Vasilyevich, we will never elect Lifshitz’s older brother as a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.” And if Landau had remained alive, Lifshits would never have become an academician."
After Concordia moved to Moscow, the Lifshits (Zhenka and Lelya - Kora’s terminology) lived together in Landau’s apartment for about a year, where Lelin’s postgraduate supervisor, Rapoport, regularly came. About this situation, Dau said: “... while Zhenya is upstairs, Lelya is downstairs at this time giving herself to her scientific supervisor... Zhenya and Lelya have a very, very cultured marriage. Without jealousy and without any prejudices. I taught Zhenya this how to live correctly..."
“The Centaur (Kapitsa’s nickname - see the section “Dau is a joker” - V.B.) knows very well the complete unsuitability for science of E.M. Lifshits, nevertheless, he dragged him into academics in 1979, because he is useful to him, knows how to stand at attention...
Maya Bessarab, the niece of Landau’s wife, wrote in the afterword to Cora’s book entitled “Strokes to the portrait of Cora Landau, my aunt”: “Peter Leonidovich Kapitsa is credited with the phrase: “Dau’s trouble is that two women were fighting at his bedside: Cora and Zhenya ". This is when, after a car accident, scandals began between his wife Cora and Dau’s co-author, Evgeniy Mikhailovich Lifshitz.”
Realizing that the enmity between Cora and Lifshits began much earlier, Bessarab, in Cora’s words, describes the incident of her beating her husband’s co-author, whom she accused of embezzling Landau’s money.
DOW IS A JOKER
“Somehow, after returning to Leningrad, the first of April was approaching. An employee of our institute published his scientific work. What I read is absurd. I am writing to Bor in Copenhagen, so that he gives a telegram to our institute addressed to this employee with the expectation that the telegram will arrive at the institute on the first of April , with the content: The Nobel Committee is interested in the scientific discovery of such and such. They are urgently asking to send four copies of the work, photos, etc., etc. The unfortunate “great scientist” ran around to take pictures in the morning, insisting on everyone to read Bohr’s international telegram. Drunk from happiness, with a smug smile, he was sealing a huge envelope when Landau, who approached him, announced to his victim an April Fool’s joke” (wrote Cora).
Apparently, having learned the lessons of his best friend, Lifshitz loved to make fun of Dau, which for some reason did not please Kora, who described one of these cases as follows: “One Saturday, having drunk too much, he went too far in his clowning.” ..., flying up to Zhenya, I gave him loud slaps in the face, saying: “Don’t you dare make a buffoon out of Dau!”... And Dau said: “Cora is right. I've been tired of your stupid jokes for a long time. Now you’ve learned it, I hope they won’t happen again?”
What would the joker Landau have said in his time if, as a result of his April Fool's joke, he had received appropriate gratitude, but only from a man?
Landau's wife describes another of her husband's jokes. The first employee of the residential building at the Kapitsa Institute was Alexander Iosifovich Shalnikov, whom Academician Abram Isaakovich Alikhanov asked: “Shurochka, tell me, your new boss, who is he? A man or a beast?” - “He’s a centaur. If you approach from the wrong end, he’ll kick you, and how!” “The nickname stuck. All these years, all the physicists, speaking among themselves about Kapitsa, called him only the Centaur.”
“Yes, the Centaur saved Landau’s life... But if the superfluidity of helium could be explained by some foreign theorist, Landau would not have left prison. After all, the Centaur remembered Landau when all the physicists of the world were at a dead end... All this was written with words of Landau. And in another place: “A centaur is a centaur! Half man, half beast. All the leading physicists of the Soviet Union agreed with this long ago." From these statements it is clear that the gratitude of the Landau family to their benefactor knew no bounds!
Kapitsa's 50th birthday was approaching, and the employees, together with Landau, began to think about a gift. “At one of these moments, Olga Alekseevna Stetskaya, Kapitsa’s deputy, came to see us. The physicists didn’t like her, they nicknamed her Stervetskaya...”, and everyone unanimously suggested that we give Kapitsa a bronze centaur on a marble pedestal. When such a gift was presented, the hero of the day became furious, “he said inarticulately: “How dare you!” and ran out of the hall, slamming the door hard. Stetskaya became hopelessly sour. Dau and I admired the masterpiece of art.”
And at the end of the description of the episode, the following words follow: “The centaur did not appreciate the joke of the physicists, but he appreciated his own joke very much. He can do everything, but not others!” Remember the famous: “Besides working as a godmother, isn’t it better to turn to yourself, godmother!”
"NON-AGGRESSION MARRIAGE PACT"
"His logical thinking, based on a very broad erudition, his renowned universalism in science was reflected in his views on human relations. Hence the theory of how to live correctly, and the marriage pact of non-aggression. Jealousy encroaches on inner freedom, destroys human dignity ", jealousy is a vice that has nothing to do with love. And he excluded this vice completely from his own consciousness" (K. Landau-Drobantseva).
“He began preparing me for this pact back in 1937, when he moved from Kharkov to Moscow.”
It should be noted that Landau formulated his attitude towards women even earlier. So in 1932, during a vacation in Bolshevo, when Landau and Pontryagin met, the first told Pontryagin about his division of women into five classes, which Pontryagin, being a normal person, could not remember in his “Biography.”
“Dau considered his theory “how to properly build a man’s personal life” as an outstanding theory...”
“The second year has passed since I became Dau’s wife. He is still in love with me, he still promises that he will soon have new lovers..., he said: “...It doesn’t cost you anything to have lovers... So Don't you have such a great feeling? Enough for only one legal husband? This, Korushka, is nonsense! It was forgivable when we were lovers... If you listen to you, you will simply be horrified. What would poor men do if all wives were faithful?!..."
On July 14, 1946, a boy, Igor, was born into the Landau family. Even before the birth of the child, in fact, the marriage non-aggression pact came into force, which provided the husband and wife with equal rights in choosing, as they would now say, sexual partners. A pact prohibiting jealousy and introducing a system of fines for unfavorable comments about one's lovers. But, if Kora was fined, then there is no information in her memoirs that Landau was ever fined by her.
As Cora wrote about the postpartum period of her life: “With the weight gain, on swollen legs, I tried to walk, it was unbearably painful. Physical pain can be overcome, but how to overcome that inner frantic aching pain in the heart, which is caused by jealousy. I kept repeating to myself: I have no right to be jealous, especially now that I’m sick and fat! But Daunka is still the same: light, graceful, infinitely cheerful. He has every right to admire the beauty of young, healthy women. But how can he admire and love a beautiful young woman body - I know that!”
One day Cora asked her husband: “Who was that girl you had?” - “Oh! This is from the radio. She came to interview me. Then she got hot, she asked me to unfasten her bra and so easily, without any delay, she gave herself to me.”
Further, Landau’s wife writes: “Everything is known by comparison. When Hera appeared, I was touched by Verochka’s tact. Verochka did not come to Dau’s house. And I did not go through painful hours... But when this Irina Rybnikova appeared from the radio, I belatedly appreciated Hera's dignity. Hera did not use the bathroom, she behaved quietly. She wanted to marry Dau without scandals. It didn't work out. And she got married with dignity. From her first visits, Irina decided to cause a scandal between me and Dau... It seemed to me that I had a a feeling of disgust even towards Dau."
But Dau explained: “You are my favorite girl. I didn’t say the word “love” to this Irina. I couldn’t be rude to the girl if she came with the goal of giving herself to me.”
“Dau was right: jealousy is evil cruelty, envy and vindictiveness without limit, jealousy was in conflict with the “Non-Aggression Marriage Pact”. The personal freedom of a real person begins at home!”
From the academician’s stories to his wife after his next appearance: “Korusha, horror! I was rude to the girl... Imagine, a very pretty girl. The style of the dress promised a lot and she snuggled so culturally, reached into her bosom - there was nothing. Not like not enough, just zero. Well, I ran away from her, like from a Frog, without even saying goodbye. And now I’m remorseful!..." At the same time, “Korusha” says nothing about how she consoled her poor husband.
But Landau’s “pact” that he developed was intensively implemented by the families of his relatives and friends: “You see, Korusha, Zhenya really asks me for one room at the dacha. He will travel twice a week with his Zinochka (Livshits’s wife’s name was Lelya, Zinochka’s last name is Gorobets - V.B.), love in the car has become dangerous...". To this Cora replied: “...Danka, wouldn’t it be too fat for their family: Zigush with Lelya (Zigush is the husband of Landau’s sister Sonya, and Lelya is Lifshitz’s wife - V.B.) in our apartment, and Now Zhenya and Gorobets will settle down at our dacha? - Korusha, in your voice you can feel the evil hissing of a snake... Who can be bothered by the arrival of Zhenya and Zinochka for two or three hours twice a week?...".
When the daughter of Zigush and Sonya grew up, she also began to come to the dacha with her lover, but she and her father arrived at different times. Cora wrote: “Ella will leave - Ziegusch will come. What to do: Everyone has love, everyone has romances, and I have to serve them! And I felt sick!”
For her objections in accordance with the “pact,” Cora was fined 1,000 rubles (from the regular book fee), she wrote: “The fine was calculated in full. But I could not rid the dacha of Zhenya... On Monday and Thursday, Evgeniy Mikhailovich Lifshits He performed his love dance at our dacha in Mozzhinka for many years.
Daunka, imagine: Lelya kicked out Zhenka Zinochka when she paid her another visit. - Yes, Zhenya told me about this impudence. Lelya also has a lot of malice. How nicely Zhenka meets Zigush and the rest of Lelya’s boys, because when Lelya decided to master Vitya in order to brighten up his loneliness, Zhenya helped Lelya. Vitya tried to resist. But Zhenya told him that he would consider it an honor to give him his marriage bed. Vitya took advantage of this manifestation of friendship and highly appreciated Zhenya’s action. Since then, he has stood by Zhenya like a mountain, considering him his close friend!”
Another episode that took place in the spring of 1946 (the son was born in July): “Corochka, I come to you with very pleasant news, tonight at twenty-one o’clock I will not return alone, a girl will come to give herself to me! I told her that you at the dacha, sit quietly, like a mouse in a hole, or leave... Please put fresh bed linen in my closet.”
Then “peace and happiness reigned in our house again. For a year, two, three, Dau has dinner at home with friends or with me, only leaving once a week. I’m not interested in where. I blossomed from happiness.”
When Dau’s numerous “girlfriends” asked if his wife was beautiful, he answered briefly: “She’s forty years old!”
As Landau’s wife writes, at one point in her life she wanted to arouse her husband’s jealousy when he found out that she had a lover. This did not produce results, and her friend complained about how thorny the path in science is when you only get through with your elbows. “Your L.D. is at ease: he has one hundred percent Jewish blood, and I am only 50 percent Jewish...” he said.
ARTYUSHA AND NITA, DAU AND MITYA
“One evening at the end of the war, Alikhanyan came to us and sat down to dinner. Dau jumped up, saying: “Artyusha, I can no longer stand your sour appearance!.. Nita is now in Moscow. Did you call her?” - “...What if Mitya comes to the phone?” - “Mitya sits at the piano and doesn’t hear phone calls.”
Here we are talking about Dmitry Shostakovich and his wife Nina, with whom Alikhanyan (Artem Isaakovich, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, academician of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, brother of academician Abram (Abushi) Isaakovich Alikhanov) was in love for a long time, with a graduate of the Leningrad physics department Nina Vasilievna, now wife of the famous composer.
Often after this incident, Artyusha and Nita (who went to work for Artyusha) visited Landau, and during the holidays of the Landau and Shostakovich families on the Black Sea coast, Artyusha often took Nita to the mountains. “And Mitya? Mitya found a piano in the sanatorium, was always surrounded by admirers of his talent and simply did not notice Nita’s absence. Alikhanyan organized scientific expeditions to Alagez and began to take Nita to Armenia for several months, presenting her with all the beauties of Armenia...”
“Arriving in Moscow, I learned with great disappointment from mutual friends that the meek, shy, simply “saint” Mitya suddenly discovered Nita’s absence. He began to be jealous and even rage, pouring out his feelings in music. Nita’s return put everything in its place.” .
The Landau family continued to be friends with the Shostakovichs: “Dau, I and Artyusha were always present at Shostakovich family celebrations. Mitya never treated guests to his works... .
After Thread's death, "Artyusha lived with Mitya for a whole month, carefully nursing him. They were united by their love for a beautiful woman."
CRIMINAL STORY?
Cora Landau wrote: “On Sunday, January 7, 1962, at ten o’clock in the morning, a new light green Volga left the Institute of Physical Problems. Vladimir Sudakov was driving. Sudakov’s wife Verochka was sitting behind, and Academician Landau was to her right. Dau valued Sudak (as he called Vladimir Sudakov) as a promising physics student. In the past, he spoke highly of the beauty of his wife Verochka."
Let us note that more than one line in the book of memoirs of Cora Landau-Drobantseva is dedicated to Verochka, as the academician’s mistress.
On January 7, Landau was going to come to Dubna, for which he had to take a 10-hour train from the Savyolovsky station in Moscow. The night before, his friend and co-author Lifshits promised to take him to the station in his new Volga, but, fearing icy conditions in the morning, Evgeniy Lifshits suggested that Landau postpone the trip.
Cora further says: “At 9 o’clock in the morning, Dau had already had breakfast... Looking into the room..., Dau said: “Don’t go out when the doorbell rings, I’ll open it myself.” It was a “stop” signal, “red light.” In our marriage “non-aggression pact” there was a point of complete freedom of personal life, complete freedom of a person’s intimate life.
“Okay,” I said, thinking that Zhenya would arrive with the girls in the car. In this case, Dau always gave a stop signal. The doorbell rang when Garik (son - V.B.) and I were having breakfast in the kitchen. A few seconds later Dau is already below...".
Subsequently, it turned out that Landau, his student and his wife, and also the academician’s mistress, went by car to Dubna!
The trip was not caused by high scientific considerations, but by the need to “save Semyon” - “Ellochka’s ex-husband. She took her son and went to another, in the same house, also an employee of Dubna.” An explanation is necessary here: Ellochka is the daughter of Landau’s sister Sonya and Zigusha is Landau’s niece (see above - section “Non-aggression marriage pact”). “...In the sense of science, Ellochka’s new lover is not worth even a trace of Semyon. But..., folk wisdom says: “Love is evil, you’ll love a goat!” When Ella came to us, I repeatedly told her: “With no one It happens. Well, I fell in love, well, they became lovers. And Semyon is a wonderful husband, a wonderful father." He, poor man, tried so hard not to notice this romance, he, as a cultured person, did not interfere with them. Semyon is my student, he had no right to be jealous. I always try to instill in my students cultural views on love , for life. But the wife of the one to whom Ellochka went, finding her in her bed, did not realize that jealousy is one of the wildest prejudices! She, with the baby in her arms, went to her family in Leningrad. Ellochka immediately went to live in an apartment new husband. Semyon lives nearby, and he couldn’t bear to see his wife and son with someone else... We need to go and straighten Semyon’s mind..."
Landau agreed on a joint train trip to Dubna with Sudakov (Sudak), his beloved student and no less beloved wife Verochka. In general, interesting points can be seen: if an academician had favorite students, then their wives were more “favorite”, or maybe they became favorite students after “this”?
And maybe one of his favorite students could no longer stand civilized love “for three,” which led to a car accident, while in the hospital Evgeny Lifshits shouted at Sudak: “Murderer!” Cora blamed Lifshits for everything: “You betrayed Dau... It was you who allowed Sudak to kill Dau!”
Maybe all this was said in anger, anything is possible.
Name: Lev Landau
Age: 60 years
Place of Birth: Baku, Azerbaijan
A place of death: Moscow
Activity: physicist
Family status: was married
Lev Landau - biography
On his 50th birthday, his colleagues presented Professor Lev Landau with “tablets” made of marble, on which were engraved 10 of his most important formulas (“commandments”). But the physicist had such not only in science, but also in life.
Childhood, Landau family
The extraordinary mind of a genius often coexists with a complex, eccentric character. Lev Landau was no exception. He began to show his temper in early childhood. One day his mother gave him a cold thermometer. The boy began to whine, and under pressure from the guests, she took the thermometer from him. He continued to sob. “But the thermometer is no longer standing!” - “And I want him not to stand before!”
Education
At the gymnasium, Lev shone in mathematics, physics and chemistry, already at the age of 12 he was calculating integrals and differentials. But in literature and literature he was known as mediocre. His essay on “Eugene Onegin” was notable for its brevity: “Tatyana Larina was a very boring person...”
Studying at Leningrad University in the 1920s was reminiscent of freedom: free attendance at lectures, choice of seminars, exams in agreement with the teacher. According to Landau, he went there two days a week to see friends and find out news. It was there that I first heard about quantum physics. At that time, this was a new direction in physics, and Lev had to master the most complex conclusions of foreign colleagues from scientific journals. Since then, he preferred the latest press: “Thick volumes do not bring anything new, they are a cemetery in which the thoughts of the past are buried.”
At Leningrad State University, the nickname Dau first stuck to him, which was awarded to him by fellow student Dmitry Ivanenko (Dimus). Leo liked it. He himself jokingly explained that L "ane is “donkey” in French, which means Landau’s surname is “Dau the donkey.” Even after becoming a teacher, he told students: “My name is Dau, I hate it when they call me Lev Davidovich.”
The shy young man experienced great discomfort from his timidity. And I decided to overcome my shortcoming. Walking along Nevsky Prospect or the embankment, he would approach people and ask strange questions: “Why do you wear a beard?” or “Why do you have a hat in the summer?!” The pause was painful, but the student steadfastly endured the puzzled looks and sometimes the anger of passers-by. Then he came up with another “task” - to walk along Nevsky with a balloon tied to his hat.
Lev Landau - biography of personal life
In Kharkov, where the young physicist came to work after a foreign internship, he met Concordia Drobantseva. He himself called her Kora or affectionately - Korusha. Later she recalled his words: “You see, Korusha, you were afraid that I would rape you, but it turned out that I myself was not capable of anything. Now I have to confess to you: you are the first girl I really kissed on the lips. How I was afraid that you would see me as a green youth and drive me away. A shame! Kiss a girl for the first time at 26 years old..."
She was a beauty, and he... One day some hard worker saw them together - the stately, plump Kora and the stooped, shaggy Dau. “What a woman is wasting away in vain!” - the proletarian could not restrain himself... However, the genius himself was critical of himself: “I don’t have a physique, but a body subtraction.” At the same time, the ladies liked him.
“The foundation of our marriage will be personal freedom,” he told his chosen one. For marriage is a “small trade shop.” At Lev’s insistence, instead of an official marriage, they entered into a “non-aggression pact in married life,” which allowed both of them to have affairs on the side. Among its provisions were the following: “Marriage is a cooperative relationship that has nothing in common with love” and “Lovers are forbidden to be jealous and lie to each other.” If Cora did show jealousy and discontent, Lev fined her. The fine was taken from the 60% of earnings that he gave her. And he sent the remaining 40% to his personal “Fund for Helping Henpecked Men Who Want to Fornicate.” That is, he spent it on his mistresses.
Cora protested, but to no avail. “Crust,” Lev told her. - You understand, I love you alone, but I will definitely have mistresses! Please don’t interfere with me...” Cora tried to tolerate his eccentricities. But up to a certain limit. One day Lev told her that a girl would come to him in the evening and, in order not to embarrass her, Cora should hide in the closet. Cora didn’t make a scandal, but when a stranger appeared in the apartment, she came out of the closet and upset the date.
Over time, Concordia began to think like a husband. “Can you imagine what a disgrace! - she complained to her sister. - The girl made an appointment with Daunka, but she didn’t come. He stood in the cold for two hours and almost got pneumonia!” And yet, on the eve of the birth of their son, in 1946, Landau officially married Cora.
The science
No matter how much Landau loved women, he loved science even more. He could pore over a task for days on end, forgetting about sleep and food. Sometimes even the ringing of the phone did not reach his consciousness. He made most of the calculations in his head, writing down intermediate results on scraps of paper. One day, his physicist friend Lifshitz boasted of a new leather briefcase and offered to get the same one.
No, Zhenya, I don’t go to the bathhouse,” Dau answered.
Why to the bathhouse? This is a briefcase for papers... Lectures. Magazines.
I have no papers... Everything is here! - Lev tapped himself on the forehead.
Already being a world luminary, Landau almost stopped reading scientific journals. Students brought him everything interesting, and if the information turned out to be worthy, he certainly checked it with his own calculations. In moments of relaxation, he could sit at card solitaire: “This is not for you to study physics. You need to think here."
Meanwhile, Landau was helpless in everyday life. One day Cora tasked him with stocking meat coupons. The professor stood in line and then heard that they had brought lamb. He didn’t know whether the lamb was meat, so he asked his neighbors. They waved it off: “What kind of meat is this?!” So, the name is the same.” The upset Leo went home. The coupons had to be thrown away.
The genius also had a unique sense of humor. He classified women and colleagues from the first, highest class to the fifth, lowest, and seriously spoke about this to those around him. In the scientific community, they did not immediately get used to his statements and began to add the saying: “Thus spoke Dau.”
Landau's theory of happiness
In addition to scientific theories, Landau was the author of another one - the theory of happiness. The physicist was sure that every person must be happy. He once admitted to his niece that as a teenager he wanted to commit suicide, but was saved by Stendhal’s novel “The Red and the Black.” Lev took the main thing out of it: “A person can build his own destiny. A person must strive for happiness and be happy!” “People stubbornly refuse to understand that happiness is within us.
Everyone likes to complicate everything, but on the contrary, I always strive for simplicity,” the academician explained. - The concepts of “difficult” and “difficult” should not be confused. We must learn to think, moreover, to control our thoughts. Then there will be no empty fears and anxieties.” And he considered boredom to be the worst sin: “The Last Judgment will come. The Lord God will call and ask: “Why didn’t you enjoy all the benefits of life? Why were you bored?”
Death of Landau
The scientist's triumph was cut short by a tragic accident. On the morning of January 7, 1962, Dau was traveling with a driver from Moscow to Dubna. The Dmitrovskoe highway became icy, and the academician’s Volga drifted into oncoming traffic. Landau suffered a severe head injury, which doctors classified as “incompatible with life.” He was saved for six long years by the entire scientific world. Colleagues traveling abroad tried to bring imported medicines for Dau. He began to recover, but was no longer able to engage in science, although sometimes he even attended scientific councils and seminars. In March 1968, Lev Davidovich underwent surgery on the intestines, and a few days later he died due to a detached blood clot.
🙂 Hello, dear readers! Thank you for choosing this article - “Lev Landau: biography, interesting facts.” Here is information about the main stages of the life of the world-famous theoretical physicist.
Lev Davidovich Landau, who forever inscribed his name in golden letters in the history of physics, became a Nobel Prize laureate in 1962.
L.D. Landau reads congratulations on being awarded the Nobel Prize
The scientist wrote many scientific articles and voluminous works on physics, in which many will not understand a single word, but people remember his catch phrases, which gradually passed into the category of folk wisdom.
Americans consider him loyal to the cause of communism. The NKVD firmly believes that he is actively participating in a conspiracy against the existing regime in the country.
He sharply, regardless of faces, criticizes the state system of the USSR for the “Iron Curtain” and the complete lack of freedoms. However, he devoted all his strength and knowledge to strengthening the country’s defense.
Several books have been written about him, and directors have made more than one film. Portraits of the famous scientist decorate the physics classrooms of many educational institutions throughout Russia and abroad.
Lev Davidovich Landau: biography
Lev was born on January 22, 1908 in Baku, which was rapidly developing economically. Not only oil production took place here, but also its refining. Large investments flocked to the city from the descendants of Nobel and Rothschild.
The Landau family moved to Baku from Mogilev as labor migrants. There was no end to the work, which attracted many specialists to the Caspian Sea.
David Lvovich (father) - an oil engineer was engaged in scientific work; he published several articles in scientific journals. Lyubov Veniaminovna (mother) graduated with honors from the St. Petersburg Medical Institute and worked as a doctor.
At the age of 8, Leva was assigned to a gymnasium. Since childhood, the boy has been a curious “explorer of the world around him.” In the gymnasium, Leva was interested in: how the nucleus of an atom is structured, how chemical processes of different substances occur. He was looking for answers to complex problems in higher mathematics and questions of biology.
At the age of 14, he could not make the final choice between mathematics and chemistry and entered two faculties at the local university at the same time.
War is raging in the Caucasus. Turkey, Britain and the USSR are fighting for possession of the city of Baku, with its huge oil deposits. The battles and bloody massacres continue, but the young man seems to exist in another world, the world of science. He is completely absorbed in his new discoveries.
In 1924, the young man made a choice in favor of physics and moved to Leningrad. Then the whole family moves to the city on the Neva.
Niels Bohr - teacher and friend
At the age of 19, Landau, under the scientific guidance of A.F. Ioffe, laid the foundations of quantum theory. The People's Commissariat for Education sends a gifted young man to Europe for further studies and pays for six months of his studies and accommodation. The remaining amount is provided by the fund at the request of N. Bohr.
Niels Bohr (1885-1962) Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1922
A tall student with shaggy hair and a burning gaze, words do not always keep up with the flight of his thoughts and he desperately gestures. This is how he speaks at almost all conferences, this is how European scientists remember him.
He worked with Bohr, whom Landau always called his teacher, in the capital of Denmark. A. Einstein, M. Born, W. Heisenberg, P. Kapitsa are people who left their bright mark on science, lived and worked at the same time.
Landau returned home, but, as one would expect, the faculty was already too small for two world-class scientists, and Landau left for Kharkov in 1932. Here, in 5 years, he laid the foundations of the theory of physics at three universities in Ukraine. In 1937, he was invited to Moscow to head the department of the Institute of Physical Problems (IPP).
Lev miraculously managed to avoid being brought to trial in the “UPTI case.” During a “thorough investigation and upon presentation of irrefutable evidence,” the institute’s employees were detained and then shot. But the NKVD did not stop there; arrests and searches began in the IFP.
In 1938, Landau was brought in for agitation against the state system. The scientist was restored to freedom at the persistent request of N. Bohr. He was “gained bail” to Pyotr Kapitsa. The “agitator” was rehabilitated in 1990.
Having been freed, Landau continues his, as always, vigorous scientific activity. List of interests: low temperatures, superconductivity and superfluidity, atomic project. The result was a textbook on theoretical physics created together with E.M. Lifshitz. The last volume was completed by Landau's students.
In 1941, the IFP was evacuated to Kazan. All work was directed towards defense. A physicist writes articles on the detonation of explosives.
Personal life of Lev Landau
Lev Davidovich in his youth seriously argued that a scientist should not smoke, drink or marry. But the last point was canceled and the reason for this was the beautiful girl Concordia Drobanskaya, who lived with Lev Landau from 1934 until the end of his life. In 1946, a son, Igor, was born, who continued the work of his famous father.
The scientist clearly divided his life into practice and theory. To prevent lies from destroying their union, the couple entered into an agreement that the spouses would be free and could date whoever they wanted. In his entire life he had only one marriage, which lasted until the end of his life, but he was often carried away by interesting women.
Landau loved measurements and calculations, and divided all people into categories according to the classification he developed. He also came up with a formula for absolute happiness: work, love and communication.
The scientist had a great sense of humor and many of his sayings became the meme “Landau said so.” Quotes from serious lectures have become popular aphorisms.
The scientist’s views on education are reflected in one phrase: “Don’t give your child a single drop of peace and constantly repeat that he must do something, and he will never be able to experience feelings of complete happiness.”
The life of the scientist was described in detail by his wife in the book “Academician Landau. How We Lived,” the film “My Husband is a Genius” (2008) was created based on it. The memoirs and the film were received ambiguously by society. The role of the scientist was brilliantly played by the actor.
last years of life
On January 7, 1962, the scientist was in a car accident and received many serious injuries. Lev Davidovich was in a coma for two months. Physicists around the world were alarmed by his state of health. The necessary medicines and even medical equipment were delivered on the nearest flights from Europe and the USA. And he survived.
However, Landau's health deteriorated significantly. Several operations were performed, but the body's resources were exhausted and on April 1, 1968, Lev Davidovich died. He is buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.
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Landau: scientific works and contributions to physics
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Semyon Solomonovich Gershtein,
Academician, Institute of High Energy Physics (Protvino)
"Nature" No. 1, 2008
One of the leading physicists of the last 20th century. Lev Davidovich Landau was at the same time the greatest generalist, making fundamental contributions to a variety of fields: quantum mechanics, solid state physics, the theory of magnetism, the theory of phase transitions, nuclear and particle physics, quantum electrodynamics, low temperature physics, hydrodynamics, theory atomic collisions, the theory of chemical reactions and a number of other disciplines.
Fundamental contributions to theoretical physics
The ability to embrace all branches of physics and penetrate deeply into them is a characteristic feature of his genius. It was clearly manifested in the unique course of theoretical physics created by L. D. Landau in collaboration with E. M. Lifshitz, the last volumes of which were completed according to Landau’s plan by his students E. M. Lifshitz, L. P. Pitaevsky and V. B. Berestetsky. Nothing like this exists in all world literature. The completeness of presentation, combined with clarity and originality, a unified approach to problems and the organic connection of various volumes have made this course a reference book for many generations of physicists in different countries, from students to professors. Having been translated into many languages, the course had a huge impact on the level of theoretical physics throughout the world. Undoubtedly, it will retain its significance for scientists of the future. Small additions related to the latest data may be made, as has already been done, in subsequent editions.
It is impossible to mention all the results obtained by Landau in a short article. I will dwell only on some of them.
While still studying at Leningrad University, Landau and his then close friends Georgy Gamow, Dmitry Ivanenko and Matvey Bronstein enthusiastically greeted the appearance of articles by W. Heisenberg and E. Schrödinger, which contained the foundations of quantum mechanics. And almost immediately, 18-year-old Landau makes a fundamental contribution to quantum theory - introducing the concept of a density matrix as a method for a complete quantum mechanical description of systems that are part of a larger system. This concept has become fundamental in quantum statistics.
Landau dealt with the application of quantum mechanics to real physical processes throughout his life. Thus, in 1932, he pointed out that the probability of transitions during atomic collisions is determined by the intersection of molecular terms, and derived the corresponding expressions for the probability of transitions and predissociation of molecules (Landau-Zener-Stückelberg rule). In 1944, he (together with Ya. A. Smorodinsky) developed the theory of “effective radius”, which makes it possible to describe the scattering of slow particles by short-range nuclear forces, regardless of the specific model of the latter.
Landau's work made a fundamental contribution to the physics of magnetic phenomena. In 1930, he established that in a magnetic field, free electrons in metals have, according to quantum mechanics, a quasi-discrete energy spectrum, and due to this, diamagnetic (associated with orbital motion) susceptibility of electrons in metals arises. In small magnetic fields, it constitutes one third of their paramagnetic susceptibility, determined by the electron’s own magnetic moment (related to the spin). At the same time, he pointed out that in a real crystal lattice this ratio can change in favor of electron diamagnetism, and in strong fields at low temperatures an unusual effect should be observed: oscillation of magnetic susceptibility. This effect was discovered experimentally a few years later; it is known as the de Haas-van Alphen effect. The energy levels of electrons in a magnetic field are called Landau levels.
Determining them for different magnetic field orientations makes it possible to find the Fermi surface (an isoenergetic surface in the space of quasimomentum, corresponding to the Fermi energy) for electrons in metals and semiconductors. The general theory for these purposes was developed by Landau's student I.M. Lifshitz and his school. Thus, Landau's work on electronic diamagnetism laid the foundation for all modern activity in determining the electronic energy spectra of metals and semiconductors. Note also that the presence of Landau levels turned out to be decisive for the interpretation of the quantum Hall effect (for the discovery and explanation of which Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1985 and 1998).
In 1933, Landau introduced the concept of antiferromagnetism as a special phase of matter. Not long before him, the French physicist L. Néel suggested that there may be substances that at low temperatures consist of two crystalline sublattices spontaneously magnetized in opposite directions. Landau pointed out that the transition to this state with decreasing temperature should not occur gradually, but at a very specific temperature as a special phase transition, during which not the density of the substance changes, but the symmetry. These ideas were brilliantly used by Landau's student I.E. Dzyaloshinsky to predict the existence of new types of magnetic structures - weak ferromagnets and piezomagnets - and indicate the symmetry of crystals in which they should be observed. Together with E.M. Lifshitz in 1935, Landau developed the theory of the domain structure of ferromagnets, first determined their shape and size, described the behavior of susceptibility in an alternating magnetic field and, in particular, the phenomenon of ferromagnetic resonance.
Of utmost importance for the theory of various physical phenomena in substances is the general theory of phase transitions of the second kind, constructed by Landau in 1937. Landau generalized the approach used for antiferromagnets: any phase transformations are associated with a change in the symmetry of the substance and therefore the phase transition should not occur gradually, but in a certain point where the symmetry of a substance changes abruptly. If the density and specific entropy of the substance do not change, the phase transition is not accompanied by the release of latent heat. At the same time, the heat capacity and compressibility of the substance change abruptly. Such transitions are called transitions of the second kind. These include transitions to the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases, transitions to the ferroelectric, structural transitions in crystals, and the transition of a metal to the superconducting state in the absence of a magnetic field. Landau showed that all these transitions can be described using some structural parameter, which is different from zero in the ordered phase below the transition point and equal to zero above it.
In the work of V.L. Ginzburg and L.D. Landau “On the Theory of Superconductivity”, completed in 1950, the function Ψ was chosen as such a parameter characterizing a superconductor, playing the role of some “effective” wave function of superconducting electrons. The constructed semi-phenomenological theory made it possible to calculate the surface energy at the boundary of the normal and superconducting phases and was in good agreement with experiment. Based on this theory, A. A. Abrikosov introduced the concept of two types of superconductors: type I - with positive surface energy - and type II - with negative. Most alloys turned out to be type II superconductors. Abrikosov showed that the magnetic field penetrates into type II superconductors gradually through special quantum vortices and therefore the transition to the normal phase is delayed to very high magnetic field strengths. It is these superconductors with critical parameters that are widely used in science and technology. After creating the macroscopic theory of superconductivity, L.P. Gorkov showed that the Ginzburg-Landau equations follow from the microscopic theory, and clarified the physical meaning of the phenomenological parameters used in them. The general theory for describing superconductivity has entered world science under the abbreviation GLAG - Ginzburg-Landau-Abrikosov-Gorkov. In 2004, Ginzburg and Abrikosov were awarded the Nobel Prize for it.
One of Landau’s most remarkable works was the theory of superfluidity he created, which explained the phenomenon of superfluidity of liquid helium-4 discovered by P. L. Kapitsa. According to Landau, atoms of liquid helium, closely bound together, form a special quantum liquid at low temperatures. The excitations of this liquid are sound waves, which correspond to quasiparticles - phonons. The phonon energy ε represents the energy of the entire liquid, not individual atoms, and must be proportional to their momentum р: ε(р) = ср(Where With - sound speed). At temperatures near absolute zero, these excitations cannot occur if the fluid flows at a speed less than the speed of sound, and thus it will not have viscosity. At the same time, as Landau believed in 1941, along with the potential flow of liquid helium, a vortex flow is possible. The spectrum of vortex excitations had to be separated from zero by some “gap” Δ and have the form
where μ is the effective mass of the quasiparticle corresponding to the excitation. At the suggestion of I.E. Tamm, Lev Davidovich called this particle a roton. Using the spectrum of quasiparticles, he found the temperature dependence of the heat capacity of liquid helium and obtained hydrodynamic equations for it. He showed that in a number of problems the movement of helium is equivalent to the movement of two liquids: normal (viscous) and superfluid (ideal). In this case, the density of the latter goes to zero above the transition point to the superfluid state and can serve as a parameter of a second-order phase transition. A remarkable consequence of this theory was Landau's prediction of the existence of special oscillations in liquid helium, when normal and superfluid liquids oscillate in antiphase.
He called it the second sound and predicted its speed. The discovery of the second sound in the excellent experiments of V.P. Peshkov was a brilliant confirmation of the theory. However, Landau was alarmed by the small difference between the observed and his predicted speed of second sound. Having carried out an analysis, he concluded in 1947 that instead of two branches of the excitation spectrum - phonon and roton - there should be a single dependence of the excitation energy on the momentum of the quasiparticle, which at small impulses increases linearly with the impulse (phonons), and at a certain value of the impulse ( p 0) has a minimum and can be represented near it in the form
At the same time, as Lev Davidovich emphasized, all conclusions regarding the superfluidity and macroscopic hydrodynamics of helium-2 are preserved. In his subsequent work (1948), Landau, as an additional argument, referred to the fact that N.N. Bogolyubov in 1947, using an ingenious technique, managed to obtain the spectrum of excitations of a weakly interacting Bose gas, depicted by a single curve with a linear dependence at small pulses. (Perhaps it was this work of Bogolyubov, together with Peshkov’s data, that prompted Landau to think about a single excitation curve.) Landau’s theory of superfluidity was brilliantly confirmed in the remarkable experiments of V.P. Peshkov, E.L. Andronikashvili and others and was further developed in joint works of Landau with I.M. Khalatnikov. The Landau excitation spectrum was directly confirmed by experiments on the scattering of X-rays and neutrons (this possibility was pointed out by R. Feynman).
In 1956-1957 Landau developed the theory of Fermi liquid (quantum liquid in which elementary excitations have half-integer spin and, accordingly, obey Fermi-Dirac statistics), applicable to a wide range of objects (electrons in metals, liquid helium-3, nucleons in nuclei). From the point of view of the developed approach, the most natural way is to construct a microscopic theory of superconductivity, which predicts new phenomena in this area. Prospects have opened up for using quantum field theory methods for calculations in the field of condensed matter theory. Further development of the theory of Fermi liquid by L.P. Pitaevsky allowed him to predict that at a sufficiently low temperature helium-3 will become superfluid. An exceptionally beautiful non-trivial phenomenon - the reflection of electrons at the interface of a superconductor with a normal metal - was predicted by A. F. Andreev, the last student whom Landau accepted into his group. This phenomenon has received the name “Andreev’s reflection” in world literature and is beginning to find wider application.
From the very beginning of his career, Lev Davidovich was interested in the problems of quantum field theory and relativistic quantum mechanics. The derivation of formulas for the scattering of relativistic electrons by the Coulomb field of atomic nuclei, taking into account the delay of interaction (the so-called Möller scattering), as Möller himself noted, was suggested to him by Landau. In work with E.M. Livshits (1934), Lev Davidovich considered the creation of electrons and positrons in the collision of charged particles. The generalization of the results obtained in this work led, after the creation of electron-positron colliders, to an important area of experimental research - two-photon physics. In his work with V.B. Berestetsky (1949), Lev Davidovich Landau drew attention to the importance of the so-called exchange interaction in a system of particles and antiparticles. An important role in the physics of elementary particles is played by Landau’s theorem (also established independently by T. Lee and C. Yang) on the impossibility of decay of a particle with spin 1 into two free photons (which is also valid for decay into two gluons). This theorem is widely used in particle physics. It, in essence, made it possible to explain the small width of the particle ?/Ψ, which caused confusion at first.
Fundamentally important results for particle physics were obtained by Lev Davidovich together with his students A. A. Abrikosov, I. M. Khalatnikov, I. Ya. Pomeranchuk and others. The main difficulty of quantum electrodynamics (just like the quantum theory of other fields) was the inversion in theoretical calculations of some physical quantities (for example, mass) to infinity. The latest development of quantum electrodynamics has provided a recipe for eliminating infinite expressions. But this did not suit Landau. He set out to develop a theory in which finite quantities would appear at each stage. To do this, it was necessary to consider the local interaction of particles as the limit of “smeared” interaction, which has a finite, arbitrarily decreasing radius of action A. This value of the radius corresponded to the value of the “cutoff” of infinite integrals in momentum space: Λ ≈ 1/a and “seed” charge e 1 (a) , which is a function of radius A. IN As a result of the calculations, it turned out that the “physical” charge of the electron observed at low field frequencies ( e) is associated with the seed e 1 (a) formula
where ν is the number of fermions, which, in addition to electrons, contribute to the polarization of the vacuum, T - electron mass, and charges e And e 1 - dimensionless quantities expressed in units of the speed of light ( With) and Planck's constant ћ:
The expression of the “seed” charge, according to (1), had the form
It is interesting that even before the calculations, Landau believed that the “seed” charge e 1 (a) will decrease and tend to zero with decreasing radius A, and thus a self-consistent theory will be obtained (since the calculations were made under the assumption e 1 2 1). He even developed a general philosophy corresponding to the modern principle of “asymptotic freedom” in quantum chromodynamics. Preliminary calculations seemed to confirm this point of view. But in these calculations an unfortunate error was made in the sign in formulas (1) and, accordingly, (2). (If the sign in (2) is wrong, indeed e 1→ 0 as Λ → ∞.) When the error was noticed, Lev Davidovich managed to take the article from the editorial office and correct it. At the same time, the philosophy of “asymptotic freedom” disappeared from the article. It's a pity. Knowing it, the Novosibirsk theorist from the Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS Yu. B. Khriplovich, having discovered in a particular example that the color charge in quantum chromodynamics decreases with decreasing distance, could perhaps construct a general theory (for which the Americans D. Gross, D. Politzer and F. Wilczek received the Nobel Prize already in the 21st century). However, in quantum electrodynamics, the effective electric charge increases with decreasing distance. Experiments at colliders showed that the effective charge at distances of ~2 10 -16 cm increased to a value of ~1/128 (compared to 1/137 at larger distances). Increase in effective charge e 1 (a) led Landau and Pomeranchuk to a conclusion of fundamental importance: if the second term in the denominator of formula (1) becomes significantly greater than unity, then the charge e regardless e 1 equals
and vanishes as Λ → ∞ or a~ 1/Λ → 0. Although there is no strict proof of such a conclusion (the theory was constructed for e 1 1), Pomeranchuk found strong arguments in favor of the fact that expression (3) will also be preserved for the value e 1 ≥ 1. This conclusion (if correct) means that the existing theory is internally inconsistent, since it leads to a zero value for the observed charge of the electron. However, there is another solution to the “zero charge” problem, which is that the value A(or charge dimensions) have not zero, but finite value. As Landau noted, the “crisis” of the theory occurs precisely at those values of Λ at which the gravitational interaction becomes strong, i.e., at distances of the order of 10 -33 cm (or energies of the order of 10 19 GeV). In other words, the hope remains for a unified theory that includes gravity and leads to an elementary length of the order of 10 -33 cm. This hypothesis anticipated the currently widespread point of view.
The concept of combined CP parity, introduced by Lev Davidovich in 1956, is of great importance for modern physics. When in 1956, in connection with the so-called Θ-τ problem, ideas arose about the possible non-conservation of spatial parity and, consequently, violation of mirror symmetry in weak processes interactions, Landau was very critical of them at first. “I cannot understand how, given the isotropy of space, right and left can be different,” he said. Due to the fact that in the local theory symmetry must be observed regarding the simultaneous implementation of three transformations: spatial reflection (P), time reversal (T) and charge conjugation (transition from particles to antiparticles (C)) - the so-called CPT theorem, violation of spatial symmetry (P) inevitably had to lead to the violation of some other symmetries. Pomeranchuk’s collaborators B.L. Ioffe and A.P. Rudik initially believed that T-symmetry should have been broken, since the preservation of C-symmetry, according to the idea of M. Gell-Mann and A. Pais, explained the presence of long-lived and short-lived neutral kaons. However, L.B. Okun noted that the latter can also be explained by the preservation of T-symmetry with respect to time reversal. As a result of discussions that Landau had with Pomeranchuk’s students, he came to the conclusion that with complete isotropy of space, the violation of mirror symmetry in processes with any particles should be associated with the difference in the interaction of particles and antiparticles: processes with antiparticles should look like a mirror image of similar ones processes with particles. He compared this situation with the fact that with complete isotropy of space, asymmetrical “right” and “left” modifications of crystals, which are mirror images of each other, can exist. Based on this, he introduced the concept of combined CP symmetry and conserved CP parity. Subsequent experiments seemed to brilliantly confirm the conservation of CP parity until, in 1964, the “milliweak” violation of CP parity (at a level of 10 -3 from the weak interaction) was discovered in the decays of long-lived neutral kaons. The study of CP parity violation has been the subject of many theoretical and experimental studies. At present, CP parity violation is well described at the quark level and has also been discovered in processes with b-quarks. According to the hypothesis of A.D. Sakharov, violations of CP symmetry and the law of conservation of baryon number can lead during the evolution of the early Universe to its baryon asymmetry (i.e., the observed absence of antimatter in it).
Simultaneously with the concept of CP parity, Landau put forward a hypothesis about a spiral (two-component) neutrino, whose spin is directed along (or against) the momentum. (This was done independently in the works of A. Salam, T. Lee and C. Yang.) Such a neutrino corresponded to the maximum possible violation of space and charge parity separately and conservation of CP parity. The left neutrino corresponded to the right antineutrino, and the left antineutrino should not exist at all. Based on this hypothesis, Lev Davidovich predicted that electrons in the process of β-decay should be almost completely polarized against their momentum (if the neutrino is left-handed), and two neutral light particles emitted in the process of μ-decay (μ - → e - +νν"), must be different neutrinos. (Now we know that one of them is a muon neutrino, ν = ν μ, and the second is an electron antineutrino, ν" = ν̃ e.) The concept of a spiral neutrino seemed attractive to Landau also because the spiral neutrino had to be massless. This seemed to be consistent with the fact that experiments gave an increasingly lower upper limit on the neutrino mass as accuracy increased. The idea of a spiral neutrino suggested to Feynman and Gell-Mann the hypothesis that perhaps all other particles (with non-zero mass) participate in the weak interaction, like neutrinos, with their left-handed spiral components. (By that time it had already been established that neutrinos have left-handed helicity.) This hypothesis led Feynman and Gell-Mann, as well as R. Marshak and E. S. G. Sudarshan, to the discovery of the fundamental ( V—A) the law of weak interaction, which pointed to the analogy of weak and electromagnetic interactions and stimulated the discovery of the unified nature of weak and electromagnetic interactions.
Landau always responded quickly to the discovery of new unknown phenomena and their theoretical interpretation. Back in 1937, he, together with Yu. B. Rumer, starting from the physical idea of the cascade origin of electromagnetic showers observed in cosmic rays, which was expressed by H. Baba with W. Heitler and J. Carlson with R. Oppenheimer, created an elegant theory this complex phenomenon. Using the effective cross sections for bremsstrahlung radiation from hard gamma quanta by electrons and positrons and the effective cross section for the production of electron-positron pairs by gamma rays, known from quantum electrodynamics, Landau and Rumer obtained equations that determine the development of showers. By solving these equations, they found the number of particles in the shower and their energy distribution depending on the depth of penetration of the shower into the atmosphere. In subsequent works (1940-1941), Lev Davidovich determined the width of the shower and the angular distribution of particles in the shower. He also pointed out that the showers observed underground may be caused by heavier penetrating particles (the "hard" component of cosmic rays, which are now known to be muons). The methods and results of these works laid the basis for all subsequent experimental and theoretical studies. Currently, they are important for research in high energy physics in two directions. On the one hand, the theory of electromagnetic showers is very important for determining the energy and type of primary particle in cosmic rays, especially at limiting energies of the order of 10 19 -10 20 eV. On the other hand, the work of electromagnetic calorimeters, which have become one of the main devices on modern high-energy collider accelerators, is based on this theory. For modern experimental studies at high energies, Landau's determination of the number of charged particles at the shower maximum, as well as his remarkable work on fluctuations of ionization losses by fast particles (1944), are very important. Lev Davidovich returned to electron shower processes in 1953 in joint work with Pomeranchuk. In these works it was indicated that the length of formation of bremsstrahlung radiation of γ quanta by a fast electron increases in proportion to the square of the electron energy: l~ λγ 2 (where λ — wavelength of the emitted γ-quantum, and γ = E/ts 2 — fast electron Lorentz factor). Therefore, in a substance it can become greater than the effective length of multiple electron scattering, and this will lead to a decrease in the probability of emission of long-wave radiation (Landau-Pomeranchuk effect).
A number of Lev Davidovich's works were devoted to astrophysics. In 1932, he, independently of S. Chandrasekhar, set an upper limit on the mass of white dwarfs - stars consisting of a degenerate relativistic Fermi gas of electrons. He noticed that at masses greater than this limit (~1.5), a catastrophic compression of the star should occur (a phenomenon that later served as the basis for the idea of the existence of black holes). In order to avoid such “absurd” (in his words) tendencies, he was even ready to admit that the laws of quantum mechanics were violated in the relativistic field. In 1937, Landau pointed out that with a large compression of a star during its evolution, the process of capturing electrons by protons and the formation of a neutron star becomes energetically favorable. He even believed that this process could be a source of stellar energy. This work became widely known as a prediction of the inevitability of the formation of neutron stars during the evolution of stars of sufficiently large mass (the idea of the possibility of the existence of which was expressed by astrophysicists W. Baade and F. Zwicky almost immediately after the discovery of the neutron).
An important section in Landau's work consists of his work on hydrodynamics and physical kinetics. The latter, in addition to works related to processes in liquid helium, includes work on kinetic equations for particles with Coulomb interaction (1936) and the well-known classical work on electron plasma oscillations (1946). In this work, Lev Davidovich, using the equation derived by A. A. Vlasov, showed that free oscillations in plasma are damped even in the case when particle collisions can be neglected. (Vlasov himself studied another problem - stationary plasma oscillations.) Landau established the plasma damping decrement depending on the wave vector, and also studied the question of the penetration of an external periodic field into the plasma. The term “Landau damping” has become firmly established in world literature.
In classical hydrodynamics, Lev Davidovich found a rare case of an exact solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, namely the problem of a submerged jet. Considering the process of the emergence of turbulence, Landau proposed a new approach to this problem. A whole series of his works was devoted to the study of shock waves. In particular, he discovered that during supersonic motion at a large distance from the source, two shock waves arise in the medium. A number of problems about shock waves, which Lev Davidovich solved within the framework of the atomic project (including with S. Dyakov), apparently still remain undeclassified.
In his work with K.P. Stanyukovich (1945), Landau studied the issue of detonation of condensed explosives and calculated the rate of expiration of their products. This issue acquired particular importance in 1949 in connection with the upcoming tests of the first Soviet atomic bomb. The speed of the detonation products of conventional explosives was crucial in order for their compression of the plutonium charge to exceed its critical mass. As it has now become known, measurements of the velocity of detonation products were carried out at the beginning of 1949 in Arzamas-16 by two different laboratories. At the same time, in one of the laboratories, due to a methodological error, a speed was obtained that was significantly lower than what was required to compress the plutonium charge. One can imagine the anxiety this caused among the participants in the atomic project. However, after the error was sorted out, it turned out that the measured velocity of the detonation products was sufficient and very close to that predicted by Landau and Stanyukovich.
Knowing Lev Davidovich as a major universal theorist, equally proficient in nuclear physics, gas dynamics, and physical kinetics, I. V. Kurchatov insisted that he be involved in the atomic project from the very beginning. The significance of Landau’s work in this project can be partly judged by at least the words of one of its outstanding participants, Academician L.P. Feoktistov: “... the first formulas for the power of an explosion were derived in Landau’s group. That's what they were called - Landau's formulas - and they were quite well done, especially for that time. Using them, we predicted all the results. At first, the errors amounted to no more than twenty percent. No calculating machines: the girls arrived later, they counted in Mercedes cars, and we counted on slide rules. No electronics, no partial differential equations. The formula was derived from general nuclear hydrodynamic considerations and included certain parameters that had to be adjusted. So the help of Landau’s group was very tangible.” It must be said that “nuclear combustion in conditions of rapidly changing geometry”—that is, according to project participant Academician V.N. Mikhailov, the report of Landau’s group was called—represented an extremely difficult task, since in this case, in addition to the nuclear reaction, it was necessary to take into account very many factors : transfer of matter, neutrons, radiation, etc. I think that solving such problems and obtaining “working” formulas was only within the power of Landau and, at the same time, was interesting to him.
It was another matter when, in the early 50s, he had to work for the purpose of self-preservation on other people’s assignments related to specific designs. But even in this case, experiencing for various reasons an aversion to this work, he performed it at his characteristic high level, developing effective methods of numerical calculations.
In a short note it is difficult to dwell on many other important works of Lev Davidovich: on crystallography, combustion, physical chemistry, statistical theory of the nucleus, multiple production of particles at high energies, etc. However, what has already been stated is enough to understand that in the person of Landau we have a brilliant physicist , one of the greatest generalists in the history of science.
"Fiery Communist"
Landau was never a party member. The father of the American hydrogen bomb, E. Teller, who met Lev Davidovich during their joint stay in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, called him a “fiery communist.” In explaining his intention to work on the hydrogen bomb, Teller cited as one of his reasons “the psychological shock when Stalin imprisoned my good friend, the eminent physicist Lev Landau. He was an ardent communist, and I knew him from Leipzig and Copenhagen. I came to the conclusion that Stalin's communism was no better than Hitler's Nazi dictatorship."
Teller had every reason to consider Landau a “fiery communist.” In private conversations, speeches in student societies, and newspaper interviews, he spoke with admiration about the revolutionary transformations in Soviet Russia. He talked about how in Soviet Russia the means of production belong to the state and the workers themselves, and therefore in the USSR there is no exploitation of the majority by the minority, and every person works for the well-being of the entire country: that great attention is paid to science and education: the university system is expanding and scientific institutes, significant amounts are allocated for scholarships to students (see articles by X. Casimir and J. R. Pellam). He sincerely believed that the revolution would destroy all bourgeois prejudices, which he regarded with great contempt, as well as undeserved privileges. He naively believed that a bright future was open to people and therefore every person was simply obliged to organize his life in such a way as to be happy. And happiness, he argued, lies in creative work and free love, when both partners have equal rights and live without any bourgeois remnants, philistinism, jealousy and part if the love has passed. The family, however, as he believed, needed to be preserved for raising children. Similar views were actively disseminated in the 1920s by some revolutionary intellectuals such as the famous A. Kollontai.
Landau retained his enthusiasm for building a new society even after returning to his homeland, although the surrounding reality could raise doubts. After all, he moved to Kharkov in 1932 and lived there during the terrible famine in Ukraine. But it was at this time that he set the task of making Soviet theoretical physics the best in the world. It was for this purpose that he conceived and began to write his wonderful “Course”, gather talented youth and create his famous school. At the same time, he wanted to write a physics textbook for schoolchildren. He retained this unfulfilled desire until the end of his life.
He associated the repressions of 1937 exclusively with the dictatorship of Stalin and his clique. “The great cause of the October Revolution has been basely betrayed. The country is flooded with streams of blood and dirt,” begins the leaflet, compiled, as stated in Landau’s investigative file, with his participation. And further: “Stalin compared himself with Hitler and Mussolini. Destroying the country in order to maintain his power, Stalin turns it into easy prey for brutal German fascism.” The last words sound prophetic. The country paid for the extermination by the Stalinist system of the highest command cadres of the Red Army, industrial leaders and talented designers with the tragedy of the initial period of the Great Patriotic War and millions of human lives. The leaflet called on the working class and all working people to resolutely fight for socialism against Stalinist and Hitlerite fascism.
The leaflet certainly reflects Landau's beliefs. However, some people who knew him doubt that he actually participated in its composition. Their arguments boil down to the fact that Lev Davidovich, who achieved great success in science and considered it his calling, could not help but realize the mortal danger of participating in the fight against the Stalinist regime. In my opinion, this is incorrect.
I think that the investigative file basically correctly reflects the history of the leaflet. His longtime comrade and former assistant M.A. Korets came to Landau with a text, which Landau corrected, but refused to deal with its future fate. Although the text of the leaflet presented to Landau during interrogation was written by Korets, the clarity and brevity of the wording in it is characteristic of Lev Davidovich’s style and convincingly testifies in favor of his co-authorship. Whether Koretz had the moral right to drag Landau into this hopeless and deadly adventure is another matter. Did he realize that he was endangering the life of a genius? Wasn't all this a provocation that Korets himself got caught up in? (The arrest of Landau and Korets occurred five days after the leaflet was written.)
His stay in prison, which lasted exactly a year, made Lev Davidovich become more cautious, but in no way changed his socialist views and devotion to the country. He actively participated in military developments during the Great Patriotic War (for which he received his first order in 1943). From the first half of 1943 (i.e., almost from the very beginning of the atomic project), he began to carry out individual work related to this project, and in 1944, I. V. Kurchatov, in a letter to L. P. Beria, pointed out the need full involvement of Landau in the project. A memorandum by A.P. Alexandrov indicates that Landau completed the theory of “boilers” in March 1947 and, together with Laboratory-2 and the Institute of Chemical Physics, is working on the development of reactions in a critical mass. It is also noted that he leads a theoretical seminar in Laboratory-2. Some historians of post-perestroika science believe that Landau was forced to participate in the atomic project solely for the purpose of self-preservation. This may be true for the last years before Stalin’s death, when tensions were building up inside and outside the country, and Lev Davidovich had to work on someone else’s orders. But this is not true for the first post-war years. This is evidenced by the speeches of Landau himself, who could not be forced by any force to say anything other than what he thought. In a speech prepared for central radio broadcasting in June 1946, Lev Davidovich, not usually given to rhetoric, writes: “Russian scientists have contributed to solving the problem of the atom. The role of Soviet science in these studies is constantly increasing. In the plan for the new five-year plan and the restoration and development of the economy, experimental and theoretical work is planned that should lead to the practical use of atomic energy for the benefit of our Motherland and in the interests of all mankind.”
After Stalin's death, Landau hoped that the socialist principles in which he believed would be restored in the country. “We will still see the sky in diamonds,” he quoted Chekhov. “Dow, where are the diamonds?” - his sister Sofya Davidovna, a beautiful, intelligent woman, a true Leningrad intellectual, who graduated from the Technological Institute and contributed to the production of titanium in our country, teased him a few years later. Landau supported Khrushchev's criticism of Stalin. He said: “There is no need to scold Khrushchev for not doing this earlier, during Stalin’s lifetime, we must praise him for deciding to do it now.” At one of the receptions in the Kremlin, A.P. Alexandrov brought Lev Davidovich to Khrushchev, and they, as Dau said, complimented each other.
One famous physicist close to Landau’s circle said several years ago that Landau was “a bit of a coward.” I couldn’t believe the newspaper interview, considering this statement to be a journalist’s mistake. However, I soon heard the same assessment expressed by the same person on a television program. This literally shocked me. Indeed, Landau bitterly called himself a coward. But those who knew him understood what a high standard he had in mind.
Didn’t Dau stand up for the convicted Korets during the Kharkov period (and achieve his release)? Didn’t you dare to drive away the person who made a statement in the trial of Korets that Landau and L.V. Shubnikov constituted a counter-revolutionary group at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology? (This statement later led to the arrest of L.V. Shubnikov and L.V. Rozenkevich, and, according to the testimony extracted from them, to the arrest of Landau himself.) How many examples are there of simply reckless courage to participate in writing an anti-Stalin leaflet in years of mass terror? Of course, upon being released, Landau became more careful. Besides everything, he knew that he had come out on the guarantee of P.L. Kapitsa should not have let him down.
Nevertheless, Lev Davidovich did what his more cautious colleagues tried to avoid. He himself went to the post office and sent money to the exiled Rumer, took care of Shubnikov’s widow O.N. Trapeznikova, and regularly went to the dacha to visit the disgraced Kapitsa. In the midst of various ideological campaigns, he signed letters against ignorant criticism of the theory of relativity and in defense of a colleague accused of cosmopolitanism (the same one who later called him a coward). There were other actions that Dau did not talk about.
“In Dau’s character, along with certain elements of physical timidity (he, like me, was afraid of dogs), there was a rare moral firmness,” recalls a longtime friend of Landau and his sister, Academician M. A. Styrikovich. “Earlier, and especially later (in difficult times), if he believed himself to be right, he could not be persuaded to compromise, even if this was necessary to avoid serious real danger.”
This quality of Dau was also evident during his stay in prison. According to the investigator’s note, prepared, apparently, for high authorities, Landau stood for 7 hours during interrogations, sat in his office for 6 days without talking (and, apparently, without sleep. - ST.), investigator Litkens “convinced” him for 12 hours, the investigators “swinged, but did not beat”, threatened to transfer him to Lefortovo (where, as they knew in the cell, they were tortured), showed confessional statements of his Kharkov friends who had been shot by that time. And he went on a hunger strike and, contrary to the investigator’s assertion that he “named Kapitsa and Semenov as members of the organization that supervised my a/c work,” did not sign the interrogation protocol before he made “clarifications” according to which he “only counted on Kapitsa and Semenov as an anti-Soviet activist, but did not dare to be completely frank, not being close enough to them, and besides, my relationship with Kapitsa did not allow me to take risks.” At the first opportunity, during an interrogation conducted by Beria’s deputy Kobulov, “he renounced all his testimony as fictitious, stating, however, that during the investigation no measures of physical coercion were applied to him.” One involuntarily recalls the words of Lev Davidovich’s beloved poet Gumilyov from the poem “Gondla”: “Yes, nature and steel were mixed into his bone composition,” referring to a physically weak but strong-spirited person.
Landau tried not to participate in philosophical discussions and never went so far as to accuse the creators of quantum mechanics of, for example, recognizing “free will of the electron.”
In the fall of 1953, when Stalin's order was still alive, Landau greatly frightened some of his colleagues close to him. After the successful test of the hydrogen bomb, he was presented with the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and by decision of the government he was assigned security. Dau rebelled against this. He said that he wrote a letter to the government, which said: “My work is nervous and cannot tolerate outside presence. Otherwise, they will guard the corpse, scientifically.” Those around were afraid of the punishment that could follow due to refusal of protection. E.M. Lifshits even made a special trip to Leningrad and persuaded Landau’s sister to influence Dau so that he would come to terms. But she resolutely refused. In connection with Lev Davidovich’s letter, he was received by the Minister of Medium Engineering and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers V. A. Malyshev. In a small circle, Dau told how the conversation went. Malyshev said that it is an honor to have security; members of the Central Committee have it. “Well, that’s their own business,” Dau replied. “But there is now an outbreak of banditry in the country, you are of great value, you need to be protected.” “I’d rather be stabbed to death in a dark alley,” Dau said. “But perhaps you are afraid that the guards will prevent you from courting women? Don't be afraid, on the contrary..." “Well, this is my personal life, and it shouldn’t concern you,” Dau replied. Listening to this story, a young mathematician from the Thermotechnical Laboratory (TTL, now ITEP) A. Kronrod exclaimed: “Well, for this conversation, Dau, you should not be given a Hero of Socialist Labor, but a Hero of the Soviet Union.”
Landau also protested against the fact that he was not allowed to attend international scientific conferences. He also wrote somewhere “up there” about this. He was received by N.A. Mukhitdinov (he was then the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee) and promised to settle the issue. Apparently, this was the reason for the request of the Central Committee’s science department to the KGB and the receipt of the now famous certificate. From the testimony of agents - secret employees in Landau's entourage - and the wiretapping data given in the KGB certificate, it is clear that, while maintaining some illusions, he ultimately comes to the following conclusion: “I reject that our system is socialist, because the means of production belong not to the people, but to the bureaucrats.”
He predicts the inevitable collapse of the Soviet system. And he discusses the ways in which this can happen: “If our system cannot collapse peacefully, then the third world war is inevitable... So the question of the peaceful liquidation of our system is a question of the fate of humanity, essentially.” Such predictions were made by the “fiery communist” in 1957, more than thirty years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Landau as I knew him
During my studies at Moscow State University, academic science was expelled from the physics department. My thesis advisor was Professor Anatoly Aleksandrovich Vlasov - a brilliant lecturer and a wonderful physicist with a tragic (in my opinion) scientific fate. Vlasov introduced me to Landau. It was in 1951 at the graduation ceremony of our course. For some reason, I pointedly did not go to the graduation ceremony, which took place in the so-called Great Communist Auditorium of the old building of Moscow State University on Mokhovaya. Walking along the balustrade near this auditorium, I met Vlasov, who also did not go to the ceremony. We were standing with him and my classmate Kolya Chetverikov when Vlasov exclaimed: “Look, Lev Davidovich himself is climbing the stairs!” Come on, I’ll introduce you.” It turned out that a group of students doing their diploma work at the Institute of Physical Problems invited Landau to our graduation party, and he came. Vlasov brought Kolya and me to him and introduced him: “Our theorists.”
I was assigned as a teacher at a hydrolysis technical school in Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory. But they refused me there. Vlasov made many attempts to get me a scientific job somewhere, but everything was to no avail because of my profile (5th point plus repressed parents). In the end, I received a referral to a rural school in the Kaluga region, 105 km from Moscow. The proximity to Moscow left me with hope of continuing scientific work with Vlasov. But he said emphatically: “I think you’d better try to start working with Landau.” Subsequently, I was very grateful to Vlasov for this advice, which, as I now understand, was given by him because of his good attitude towards me.
In the fall of 1951, when I started working in a rural school, my close friend from the university, Sergei Repin, visited me. He was the fiancé of Natalya Talnikova, who lived in the apartment next to Landau. “You should take Landau’s exams,” he said, “here’s his phone number. Call him". With great hesitation, having prepared for the first exam (which I thought would be “Mechanics”), I called Landau, introduced myself and said that I would like to take his theoretical minimum. He agreed and set a time, asking if it suited me.
At the appointed hour, having asked for time off from school, I rang Landau’s doorbell. A very beautiful woman, as I understood it, Landau’s wife, opened the door for me. She greeted me warmly, saying that Lev Davidovich would come soon, and took me to the 2nd floor into a small room, which I remembered forever. After waiting about fifteen minutes, I noticed to my horror that a puddle of my shoes had leaked onto the shiny parquet floor. While I was trying to wipe it with my papers, voices were heard below. “Daulenka, why are you late? The boy has been waiting for you for a long time,” I heard a female voice and some explanations given by a male voice. Going upstairs, Lev Davidovich apologized for being late and said that the first exam should be mathematics. I didn’t specifically prepare for it, but since it was (unlike physics) taught very well at the physics department, I said that I could take mathematics right away.
To some extent, it was even good that I did not prepare for mathematics, since I took the integral proposed by Landau easily, without using Euler’s substitutions (for using them in simple examples, as I learned, Lev Davidovich was kicked out of the exam). After I solved all the problems, he said: “Okay, now prepare the mechanics.” “And I just came to hand it over,” I said. Landau began to offer me problems in mechanics. I must say that Landau’s exams were easy to pass. I was encouraged by his friendly attitude and, I would say, sympathy for the examinee. Having given the next task, he usually left the room and, occasionally coming in and looking at the sheets of paper written by the examinees, said: “Okay, okay, you’re doing everything right. Finish quickly." Or: “You are doing something wrong, you need to do everything according to science.” I was the last one to take all nine exams. L.P. Pitaevsky, who passed the theoretical minimum after me, had only two: the first in mathematics, and the second in quantum mechanics. Pitaevsky handed over the rest to E.M. Lifshits. Lev Petrovich said that Lifshits was usually only interested in the final answer, checking its correctness.
Having successfully passed the “mechanics” test, I told Lev Davidovich (not without timidity) that I had noticed quite a few typos in his book. He was not at all offended; on the contrary, he thanked me and noted in his notebook those typos I found that had not been noticed before. Only after all this did he begin to ask me with whom I had previously studied at Moscow State University. I was waiting for this question and was ready to defend Vlasov if Landau spoke badly about him. To my surprise and joy, he said: “Well, Vlasov is perhaps the only one in the physics department with whom you can deal. True,” he added, “Vlasov’s latest idea about a single-particle crystal, in my opinion, is of purely clinical interest.” It was difficult to object to this. At the beginning of 1953, I passed all the theoretical minimum exams, and Lev Davidovich recommended me to Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, telling me then a phrase that was later quoted by many: “I don’t know anyone except Zeldovich who has so many new ideas, perhaps at Fermi."
In August 1954, having finally completed my required term, I was able to leave school and came to Moscow to get a job at some scientific institution or university. But the Stalinist order was still largely preserved. They didn’t take me anywhere, despite the brilliant testimonial signed by Landau and Zeldovich. After several months of being unemployed, I began to feel desperate. What saved me from this was the care of Lev Davidovich and Yakov Borisovich and the support of my fellow students: the family of V.V. Sudakov and the family of A.A. Logunov.
I began to think about leaving Moscow. But at the beginning of 1955 Landau told me: “Be patient. There is talk about the return of P. L. Kapitsa. Then I can take you to graduate school.” Indeed, in the spring of 1955, Pyotr Leonidovich again became the director of the Institute of Physical Problems, and after a demonstration exam given to me by Kapitsa, I was accepted into graduate school. Landau appointed A. A. Abrikosov as my leader, with whom we became friends. True, I was not very attracted to the proposed task: determining the shape and size of superconducting regions in an intermediate state in a current-carrying conductor. I was attracted to particle physics. The discovery of parity nonconservation and muon catalysis gave me the opportunity to address these problems. Since Landau himself took up the problems of weak interaction, he became my immediate supervisor and instructed me to clarify certain issues. For example, he immediately asked to check what the degree of polarization of electrons would be in β-decay.
It was then believed that the β-interaction was a combination of scalar, pseudoscalar and tensor variants, symmetrical with respect to particle permutation, and the helicity of neutrinos was unknown. To be certain, Landau considered her to be right. I received confirmation that electrons in β-decay will be polarized in the direction of their momentum (in the case of a right-handed neutrino) with the magnitude +ν/c(ratio of electron speed to light speed). What seemed intriguing to me was that the electron and proton participated in the β-interaction only with their left-handed components, and the neutrino and neutron with their right-handed components. Landau also found this interesting. But we didn't go any further. Lev Davidovich assigned me to consult on the theory of experimenters from the current Kurchatov Center who were preparing to measure the polarization of electrons, and I had the pleasure of discussing issues with one of our best experimenters, P. E. Spivak.
I remember the following episode from that time. Having put forward the hypothesis of the longitudinal neutrino, Landau immediately wanted to indicate its consequences. He asked me if I had ever considered muon decay. “How did you integrate over phase space? In elliptical coordinates? “Yes, elliptical,” I replied. Lev Davidovich said nothing. He apparently did not know about the invariant calculation technique, but felt that the old technique was cumbersome and not very beautiful. Therefore, in his article he gave only the result, without giving the calculations themselves. It seems to me that in many other cases, the general approach to solving various problems, for which Landau was so famous, arose in him as a result of long and painstaking work, which he kept silent about.
Landau's seminars are mentioned in many memoirs. I will only talk about two that I remember. A mathematician friend of mine once mentioned that I.M. Gelfand decided to study quantum field theory because, in his opinion, all the difficulties in it arise from the fact that physicists do not know mathematics well. After a while my friend said: “Gelfand did everything.” “What did he do?” I asked. “Everything,” answered the mathematician. This rumor spread widely, and Israel Moiseevich was invited to make a report at Landau's seminar.
Gelfand committed an unprecedented trick - he was 20 minutes late. Another speaker was already speaking at the blackboard. But Lev Davidovich asked him to give way to Gelfand. Contrary to custom, Landau did not allow Abrikosov and Khalatnikov to raise objections during the report, but literally staged a rout after its completion. It was said that after the seminar, Israel Moiseevich said that theoretical physicists are far from being as simple as he thought, and that theoretical physics is very close to mathematics, so he will do something else, say, biology.
Subsequently, when Lev Davidovich was lying after the accident at the Institute of Neurosurgery, it turned out that Gelfand worked there. “What is he doing here?” - one of the physicists asked the chief physician Egorov. “You’d better ask him yourself,” he replied.
Another, truly historical, was a seminar at which N.N. Bogolyubov spoke about his explanation of superconductivity. The first hour was quite tense. Landau could not understand the physical meaning of the mathematical transformations that Nikolai Nikolaevich made. However, during the break, when Bogolyubov and Landau, walking along the corridor, continued their conversation, Nikolai Nikolaevich told Lev Davidovich about the Cooper effect (pairing of two electrons near the Fermi surface), and Landau immediately understood everything. The second hour of the seminar went, as they say, with a bang. Landau lavished praise on the work done, which was completely unusual for him. In turn, Nikolai Nikolaevich praised the ratio that Lev Davidovich wrote on the board and advised that it be published. We agreed on a joint seminar.
I was glad for the cooperation that arose, since I did not understand (and still do not understand) why Landau was wary of Bogolyubov. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Nikolai Nikolaevich maintained relationships with people whom Lev Davidovich did not respect or like: “Why did he leave D. D. Ivanenko and A. A. Sokolov in his department?” But perhaps this was due to the fact that the Science Department of the Central Committee patronized Bogolyubov’s school, and accused Landau and his school of many sins. Tensions in relations were also caused by some members of both schools, who tried to be more royalists than the king himself. Since among Bogolyubov’s students there were my friends who talked about him, I tried to convince Dau that Bogolyubov, by his nature, could not, in principle, plot anything bad either against him personally or against anyone else. But a large article by Academician I.M. Vinogradov appeared in Pravda. It said that the mathematician N. N. Bogolyubov solved problems that theoretical physicists could not solve, explaining superfluidity and superconductivity (and Landau’s name was not even mentioned in connection with superfluidity). The joint work of the two schools did not work out.
Landau had a completely uncompromising attitude towards works and judgments that seemed wrong to him. And he expressed it openly and rather sharply, regardless of faces. Thus, Nobel laureate V. Raman was enraged by Landau’s remarks, which he made at his report at Kapitsa’s seminar, and literally pushed Landau out of the seminar.
I knew of only one case when Lev Davidovich avoided criticism of incorrect work. This happened when N.A. Kozyrev was supposed to speak at Kapitsa’s seminar with his wild hypothesis about energy and time. Landau knew that Kozyrev, who began his career as a talented astrophysicist, then spent many years in the camp, and felt sorry for him, but he could not hear nonsense. Therefore, contrary to his custom, he simply did not go to the seminar. I heard that at one time he did not go to the report of his close friend Yu. B. Rumer, arranged by physicists in order to apply for permission for him to live and work in Moscow. Rumer was deprived of this right after many years of imprisonment, spent in the “sharashka” together with A. N. Tupolev and S. P. Korolev, and then in exile. Landau's support could be significant. But Landau did not believe in the idea developed by Rumer, and he organically could not tell a lie.
Lev Davidovich also had erroneous assessments. At Bogolyubov's report, he criticized his work on the weakly nonideal Bose gas, i.e., work that he later considered an outstanding achievement. As I recall, he criticized the report of the remarkable physicist F. L. Shapiro (who, based on his experimental data, supplemented the theory of effective radius), but then, having convinced himself of the correctness of the result, apologized to him and inserted this result into his course “Quantum Mechanics”.
A critical mindset sometimes prevented Landau from accepting new ideas until he fully understood their physical basis. This was the case, for example, with nuclear shells and the latest development of quantum electrodynamics. I remember this episode. In the summer of 1961, I came to Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich to discuss the problem of the second (muon) neutrino. New evidence was accumulating in favor of this hypothesis. “Let's go to Dau,” Zeldovich said after our discussion. We found him in the Fizproblem garden. He said he was enjoying the warm day. He apparently didn’t really want to talk about science at that moment. “It is impossible to accurately count the processes that speak in favor of two different neutrinos. And why multiply the number of elementary particles, there are already plenty of them,” said Dau, dismissing all our objections. “It’s a pity that you didn’t express these considerations in 1947. It would have greatly helped the Alikhanov brothers,” joked Yakov Borisovich. (The Alikhanov brothers “discovered”, thanks to errors in the experimental technique, a large number of unstable particles - “varitrons”, for which they received the Stalin Prize in 1947.) Dau did not answer this joke. “Why did Dau believe the Alikhanovs?” - I asked Yakov Borisovich when we were alone. “Dau was distrustful of the meson theory of nuclear forces,” he explained, “almost nothing in it can be accurately calculated, and then Ivanenko advertises it in every possible way. And since it turned out that there are many mesons—varitrons—that means,” Dau decided, “they have nothing to do with nuclear forces.”
Of all the great modern physicists, Lev Davidovich reminded me most of Richard Feynman. Subsequently I was able to verify this. In 1972, at a conference on weak interactions held in Hungary, V. Telegdi introduced me to Feynman, who gave his famous talk “Quarks as Partons.” After one of the talks in which I made a remark about the possibility of the existence of a third lepton (besides the electron and the muon) and its properties, Feynman came up to me and said that he believed in the existence of a third lepton. He also asked me what I was doing now. I told him about the problem of supercritical nuclei, which Zeldovich and I worked on several years ago and which was finally solved by Yakov Borisovich and V.S. Popov from ITEP. Feynman became interested in this, and we talked with him in the restaurant lobby from lunch until dinner. He even wrote down the problem Z > 137 on a special card that he took out of his wallet. During the discussion he reminded me a lot of Dau. I told him about this. “Oh, that’s a big compliment to me,” he replied.
Feynman valued Landau very much. During my graduate school days, I remember conversations about a letter Feynman wrote to him. In this letter, he admitted that, when he began to study superfluidity, he did not believe in some of Landau’s results, but the more he delved into this problem, the more convinced he became of the correctness of his intuition. In this regard, Feynman asked Landau what he thought about the situation in quantum field theory. Dau wrote about zero charge in his answer. Feynman reminded me of Landau in his style of behavior. It seems to me that for him, like Lev Davidovich, shocking was a means of overcoming natural shyness.
I was glad to learn that V. L. Ginzburg also found their similarities. However, I completely disagree with Vitaly Lazarevich’s opinion that Landau did not have warm, friendly feelings for anyone. “For some reason I think, although I’m not sure of this, that Landau generally did not usually have such feelings,” recalls Ginzburg. It is possible that Vitaly Lazarevich did not observe anything like this. But his colleague and friend E. L. Feinberg was touched by the manifestation of these feelings on the part of Landau to Rumer and quotes the words of Kapitsa: “Those who knew Landau closely knew that behind this harshness in judgment, in essence, there was a very kind and a sympathetic person." Could a callous person who has no warm feelings for anyone find such poignant words to begin his article: “With deep sadness, I send this article, written in honor of Wolfgang Pauli’s sixtieth birthday, to a collection dedicated to his memory. His memories will be cherished by those who had the good fortune to know him personally.” Many could not help but notice how warmly Landau treated, for example, I. Ya. Pomeranchuk, N. Bohr, whom he revered as his teacher, and his youth friend R. Peierls.
I felt Dau’s sympathy and support in the most difficult moments of my life: when I worked in a rural school, not having the opportunity to do science, and when I could not get a job, returning to Moscow, and later, in the fall of 1961, when she left me wife, leaving me, at my request, our three-year-old son. Dau, who was always interested in the family life of his friends and students, was upset by this. He asked how I was coping with the child. I explained that my son has a nanny, and we, according to his theory, solve the situation as intelligent people. But this apparently did not calm him down, and he began to show special attention to me.
I usually tried to come to Kapitsa’s seminar on Wednesday in order to attend the theoretical seminar the next morning. Dau began inviting me to have dinner with him after Kapitsa’s seminar. Before that, I visited his house relatively rarely. We talked about science and life. I remember that Cora was worried that Kapitsa wanted to write a letter to Khrushchev due to the fact that Landau was not allowed to attend international conferences. “He can write something like that,” she said. “He wrote a letter to Stalin complaining about Beria!” Dau argued with her and praised Pyotr Leonidovich in every possible way. On Wednesday, January 3, 1962, Yu. D. Prokoshkin and I were invited to give a report at Kapitza’s seminar on a direction of research that was later called “meson chemistry.” We performed second. The famous Linus Pauling, twice Nobel Prize winner: in chemistry and for peace, spoke at the first hour.
After the seminar, Kapitsa, as usual, invited the speakers and closest employees to his office for tea. He entertained the guest with conversations about politics: about de Gaulle, about Churchill’s scientific advisers, about the Swedish king, etc. At some point, Dau got up from the table, walked to the door and beckoned to me with his finger. We went to the reception area. “Well, how are you doing?” - Dau asked. “Everything is fine,” I answered, “come to Dubna. Now they are preparing several interesting experiments there. Many people will be very interested in talking with you.” “Well, I’m slow and lazy,” Dow said. And we returned to Pyotr Leonidovich’s office.
However, a day later, my classmate, the wife of my friend, one of Landau’s most talented young students, Vladimir Vasilyevich Sudakov, called me in Dubna: “Dau was in TTL and came to see us,” she said. “He said that you called him to Dubna, and he decided to come with us.” At first they planned to go by train, but then Dau was confused that I lived quite far from the station, and they decided to go by car (not knowing that I was going to meet them at the station in an institute car). I was waiting for them on Sunday, January 7, and even, using the advice of my cottage neighbor S.M. Shapiro, prepared lunch.
Around one o'clock in the afternoon I began to worry. It was windy outside, there was drifting snow and there was ice. I went to the neighboring cottage to see A. A. Logunov, who had a direct telephone line to Moscow, and called Dau’s home. It was busy there. Then I called Abrikosov. He didn't know anything. My excitement intensified, and I began to continuously dial Dau's number. At some point he freed himself, and Cora said: “Dau is in the hospital, dying. I can not talk. I’m waiting for a call” and hung up. I immediately reported this to Abrikosov, realizing that he would do everything possible to help Dau. Having contacted Abrikosov again and learned that there had been a car accident and Dau was in hospital No. 50, I rushed to Moscow.
The hospital already had several invited highly qualified doctors, who were found on Sunday by the attending physician Dau (I think Karmazin). Fortunately, Sudakov knew his phone number and informed him about the disaster. They provided Dau with urgent assistance. In the hospital waiting room, I learned about the terrible injuries Dow had received. The next morning, the hospital was filled with an unusually quiet crowd of physicists who had learned of the disaster. Kremlin doctors arrived, and the first thing they did was write a protocol stating that the injuries received were incompatible with life. Much has been written about Landau's illness and the efforts made to save him. I won't touch on this. I remember the unity of physicists, which involved many people who did not know Dau. It was a moment of truth that revealed the inner essence of various people.
I want to write only about what I saw after Landau was discharged from the academic hospital. In the summer he was taken to a dacha in Mozzhinka. Not knowing about his condition, I went there. Dau was looked after by Cora's sister. She said that Dau, realizing his situation, despairs that he will not be able to work as before. He does not sleep and says that he has become such a nonentity that he cannot even commit suicide. I involuntarily remembered the lines of one of Dau’s favorite poems by N. Gumilyov: “And neither the shine of a gun, nor the splash of a wave is now free to break this chain.”
Subsequently, Dau's life passed mainly between home and the academic hospital. People who came to him tried to tell him the news of physics, not realizing that he could not concentrate as before, and this was causing him agony. But he remembered old things perfectly. They say that his RAM has disappeared. But this is not entirely true. His working memory did not disappear, just as his humor did not disappear, despite the pain.
Once, returning from a trip to the mountains, I came to visit Dau at the academic hospital without shaving off the beard that I had grown in the mountains. And Dau didn’t like people with beards: “Why wear your stupidity on your face.” Seeing me, he asked: “Syoma, have you really signed up to be a castrati?” "What do you mean, Dau?" “And the fact that you became a follower of Fidel Castro,” he said. When the next day, having shaved, I went to see him, at the gate to the hospital garden I ran into E.M. Lifshitz and V. Weiskopf, whom Evgeniy Mikhailovich had brought to visit Dau. It turns out that Dau told them: “Yesterday Semyon came to me with a disgusting beard. I told him to shave it off immediately.” Together we were glad that Dau also had RAM.
Time passed, and many of those who selflessly saved Lev Davidovich began to forget about him. Once, visiting him in the hospital, I found him walking around the hospital yard with Irakli Andronikov, who was also being treated in the hospital and with whom Landau was friends. Nurse Tanya walked behind them. She told me that almost no one comes to Dau now and this upsets him very much. Alyosha (Abrikosov) appears regularly. I tried to entertain Dau with various funny stories. Then I made a mistake by saying that the Physics Problems theorists want to organize a special theoretical institute in Chernogolovka. "For what? - said Dau. “Theoreticians must work alongside experimentalists.” (Subsequently I read that Landau himself and Georgiy Gamow tried to organize an institute of theoretical physics. Apparently, Dau did not want the separation of theorists from the Institute of Physical Problems, out of gratitude to Kapitsa.)
From the hospital I immediately went to the Institute of Physical Problems and reproached my friends for not visiting the patient. A typical answer: “It’s unbearable for me to see a teacher in such a state.” I couldn’t understand this: “What if, say, your father was in this condition, you wouldn’t be able to see him either?” Khalatnikov reproached me for telling Dau about Chernogolovka: “We tried not to tell him about it.” By the way, the Institute of Theoretical Physics, organized by Landau’s students, has become one of the world’s best centers and deservedly bears the name of Landau. I had the opportunity to joke about this. The fact is that when Khalatnikov and Abrikosov “pushed” one of their articles through Dau, he wrapped it up several times and, going into our graduate student room, repeated: “After my death, Apricot and Khalat will create a world center for pathology.” Therefore, when Isaac Markovich told me that the organizers managed to name the Institute after Landau, I replied: “Dau predicted many times that you and Alyosha would organize such a center, but what he did not think of (even though he could) is that This center will be named after him!
Landau's sixtieth birthday was approaching. Concerned about this, I called A. B. Migdal, who had a wonderful 50th anniversary celebration. “There’s no need to arrange anything,” he said, “Dau is in bad shape right now.”
On January 22, 1968, Karen Avetovich Ter-Martirosyan, Vladimir Naumovich Gribov and I met at the Institute of Physical Problems and, after some hesitation, decided to go to Landau’s house to congratulate him on his 60th birthday. He was alone with Cora. It seemed to me that he was glad to see us. We sat with him and Cora at the table for a long time, drank tea with homemade cakes and talked about some general topics. Dau looked calm and sad, smiling occasionally. One of his last family photographs, shown here, captures his appearance well. A.K. Kikoin, his friend from the time he worked in Kharkov, brother of I.K. Kikoin, came to congratulate Dau. The famous physician and wonderful person A. A. Vishnevsky, majestic in his general’s overcoat, came in, and provided great assistance in the treatment of Landau. And we all sat there and couldn’t leave. We only said goodbye at about six o'clock, when Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa and his wife Anna Alekseevna arrived. This is how Lev Davidovich celebrated his sixtieth birthday.
When Khalatnikov, the director of the Landau Institute, returned from India, he organized a celebration of Landau’s anniversary at the IPP in March. There were a lot of people, Nobel laureates were present, Alexander Galich sang in the conference room (and then in Kapitsa’s office). Dau sat with a detached look, smiling faintly at those who congratulated him.
Less than a month later he was gone.
Literature
1.Feoktistov L.P. A weapon that has exhausted itself. M., 1999.
2. History of the Soviet atomic project (ISAP). M., 1997.
3. Memories of L. D. Landau. M., 1988.
4. News of the CPSU Central Committee. 1991. No. 3.
5. USSR Atomic Project. T. II. P. 529. M.; Sarov, 2000.
6. Ranyuk Yu. N. L. D. Landau and L. M. Pyatigorsky // VIET. 1999. No. 4.
7. Gorelik G. L.“My anti-Soviet activity” // Nature. 1991. No. 11.
8. Sonin A. S. Physical idealism: The story of an ideological campaign. M., 1994.
9. Historical archive. 1993. No. 3. pp. 151-161.
A good brief overview can be the book by A. A. Abrikosov “Academician Landau” (Moscow, 1965), as well as articles by E. M. Lifshitz in the “Collected Works of L. D. Landau” (Moscow, 1969) and the book “Memories of L. D. Landau" (M, 1988).
A classical gas of free charge carriers should not have diamagnetism.
This is what electric adding machines were called.