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Wikiquote</div> </div> <div id="contentSub"><div id="mw-content-subtitle"></div></div> <div id="mw-content-text" class="mw-body-content"><div class="mw-content-ltr mw-parser-output" lang="en" dir="ltr"><figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Landau.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Landau.jpg/220px-Landau.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="311" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Landau.jpg/330px-Landau.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Landau.jpg/440px-Landau.jpg 2x" data-file-width="1080" data-file-height="1527" /></a><figcaption>Lev Landau, 1962</figcaption></figure> <p><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau" class="extiw" title="w:Lev Landau">Lev Davidovich Landau</a></b> (<a href="/wiki/January_22" title="January 22">January 22</a> <a href="/wiki/1908" class="mw-disambig" title="1908">1908</a> – <a href="/wiki/April_1" title="April 1">April 1</a> <a href="/wiki/1968" title="1968">1968</a>) was a Soviet <a href="/wiki/Physicist" class="mw-redirect" title="Physicist">physicist</a>, who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. He received the 1962 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Physics" class="extiw" title="w:Nobel Prize in Physics">Nobel Prize in Physics</a> for his development of a mathematical theory of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/superfluidity" class="extiw" title="w:superfluidity">superfluidity</a> that accounts for the properties of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/liquid_helium" class="extiw" title="w:liquid helium">liquid</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/helium_II" class="extiw" title="w:helium II">helium II</a> at a temperature below 2.17 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin" class="extiw" title="w:Kelvin">K</a> (−270.98 °<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius" class="extiw" title="w:Celsius">C</a>). </p> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Quotes">Quotes</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Lev_Landau&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Quotes"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><i>Главное, делайте всё с увлечением, это страшно украшает жизнь.</i> <ul><li>It is important to do everything with passion, it embellishes life enormously.</li> <li>in a letter to his niece Maya Bessarab, as quoted by her in <cite style="font-style:normal" class="book"><i>Lev Landau, biography</i>. Moscovskiy Rabochiy (Moscow Worker). 1971.</cite><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Lev+Landau%2C+biography&rft.date=1971&rft.pub=Moscovskiy+Rabochiy+%28Moscow+Worker%29&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Lev_Landau"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This work contains many things which are new and interesting. Unfortunately, everything that is new is not interesting, and everything which is interesting, is not new. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-02-01-04.htm">[1]</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>In the 1930s Landau was already saying, "I am one of the few universal physicists"; after the death of <a href="/wiki/Enrico_Fermi" title="Enrico Fermi">Enrico Fermi</a>, this became "I am the last of the universal physicists". <ul><li>as reported by Anna Livanova (and as translated by J. B. Sykes), <cite style="font-style:normal" class="book"><i><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com/books?id=baRGBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA7">Landau: A Great Physicist and Teacher</a></i>. Elsevier. 22 October 2013. p. 7. <a href="/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781483285542" title="Special:BookSources/9781483285542">ISBN 9781483285542</a>.</cite><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Landau%3A+A+Great+Physicist+and+Teacher&rft.date=22+October+2013&rft.pages=p.%26nbsp%3B7&rft.pub=Elsevier&rft.isbn=9781483285542&rft_id=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DbaRGBQAAQBAJ%26pg%3DPA7&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Lev_Landau"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>A method is more important than a discovery, since the right method will lead to new and even more important discoveries. <ul><li>reported by Lance Dixon <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/03/guest-post-lance-dixon-on-calculating-amplitudes/">[2]</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>People who hear of some extraordinary phenomenon start proposing to explain it with improbable hypotheses. First consider the simplest explanation: that it's all nonsense. <ul><li>reported by Boris Ioffe in: <cite style="font-style:normal" class="book" id="CITEREFShifman,_M.2013">Shifman, M., ed (2013). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com/books?id=oYu6CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA25">"Lev Davidovich Landau"</a>. <i>Under the Spell of Landau: When Theoretical Physics Was Shaping Destinies</i>. World Scientific. pp. 5–29. <a href="/wiki/Special:BookSources/9789814436571" title="Special:BookSources/9789814436571">ISBN 9789814436571</a>.</cite><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.btitle=Lev+Davidovich+Landau&rft.atitle=Under+the+Spell+of+Landau%3A+When+Theoretical+Physics+Was+Shaping+Destinies&rft.date=2013&rft.pages=pp.%26nbsp%3B5%E2%80%9329&rft.pub=World+Scientific&rft.isbn=9789814436571&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Lev_Landau"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span> (quote from p. 25)</li></ul></li> <li>The idea seems to exist that there can be an absolutely continuous transition between the liquid and crystalline state (analogous to the transition liquid-gas), which would require the existence of a miraculous state which is neither isotropic nor anisotropic. <ul><li>Landau, Lev. "The theory of phase transitions." <i>Nature</i> 138.3498 (1936): 840-841.</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Quotes_about_Lev_Landau">Quotes about Lev Landau</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Lev_Landau&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Quotes about Lev Landau"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>In 1958, Landau and certain other seminar participants were highly enthusiastic about the new Heisenberg theory in which all particles arise from a universal fermion field. (Others, however, took a highly skeptical view of this theory.) At one seminar Landau received a letter through <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Pontecorvo" class="extiw" title="w:Bruno Pontecorvo">Pontecorvo</a>, supposedly from <a href="/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli" title="Wolfgang Pauli">Pauli</a>, and Landau read it aloud. In the brief letter, Pauli wrote that he liked Heisenberg's theory, that he'd found new arguments in its favor and found it highly plausible. Moreover, wrote Pauli, the latest experiments with Λ hyperons confirm Heisenberg's theory. No details were given about these experiments, though. There was great excitement: after all, Pauli was known as a person with a critical turn of mind, far from gullible. Different hypotheses were advanced; one young theorist even went up to the board and tried to imagine what the experiment could be that Pauli wrote of. Meanwhile, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_Migdal" class="extiw" title="w:Arkady Migdal">Migdal</a> took the letter, read it carefully and said, "Something's strange here. If you read the first letters of all the lines from top to bottom, it spells the Russian word 'fools.' What could that mean?" The secret was simple: The letter was written by Migdal and Pontecorvo. <ul><li>Boris Ioffe in: <cite style="font-style:normal" class="book" id="CITEREFShifman,_M.2013">Shifman, M., ed (2013). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com/books?id=oYu6CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA13">"Lev Davidovich Landau"</a>. <i>Under the Spell of Landau: When Theoretical Physics Was Shaping Destinies</i>. World Scientific. pp. 5–29. <a href="/wiki/Special:BookSources/9789814436571" title="Special:BookSources/9789814436571">ISBN 9789814436571</a>.</cite><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.btitle=Lev+Davidovich+Landau&rft.atitle=Under+the+Spell+of+Landau%3A+When+Theoretical+Physics+Was+Shaping+Destinies&rft.date=2013&rft.pages=pp.%26nbsp%3B5%E2%80%9329&rft.pub=World+Scientific&rft.isbn=9789814436571&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Lev_Landau"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span> (quote from p. 13)</li></ul></li> <li>It is Landau’s <i>invention</i>—as it may, I feel, be fairly called—of the <i>order parameter</i> that is so important but often underappreciated... Landau’s concept of the order parameter, indeed, brought light, clarity, and form to the general theory of phase transitions, leading eventually, to the characterization of multicritical points and the understanding of many characteristic features of ordered states. But in 1944 a bombshell struck! <a href="/wiki/Lars_Onsager" title="Lars Onsager">Lars Onsager</a>, by a mathematical tour de force, deeply admired by Landau himself, computed exactly the partition function and thermodynamic properties of the simplest model of a ferromagnet or a fluid... the nature of the critical singularities disagreed profoundly—as I will explain below—with essentially all the detailed predictions of the Landau theory (and of all foregoing, more specific theories). <ul><li><cite style="font-style:normal">Fisher, Michael E. (1998-04-01). "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/RevModPhys.70.653">Renormalization group theory: Its basis and formulation in statistical physics</a>". <i>Reviews of Modern Physics</i> <b>70</b> (2): 653–681. <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:GoToLinkedPage/enwiki/Q25670" class="extiw" title="d:Special:GoToLinkedPage/enwiki/Q25670">DOI</a>:<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.1103%2FRevModPhys.70.653">10.1103/RevModPhys.70.653</a>.</cite></li></ul></li> <li>In 1956 Shapiro had been very actively investigating the so-called $\tau-\theta$ problem, which had been puzzling physicists for a long time. Shapiro came to the conclusion that the only possible explanation could be the parity non-conservation in this decay of mesons... Landau, when Shapiro presented him the paper, laughed at such an idea -- without Landau's holy consent Shapiro's paper could not be published. It remained on his desk, where I saw it many months before Lee and Yang submitted their paper for publication. So, because of Landau, Soviet physics lost one Nobel prize. A similar case is reported by Landau's closest collaborator, A.A. Abrikosov. Landau's negative attitude to Abrikosov's theory had delayed the discovery of superconductivity II for about four years. <ul><li>Janouch, Frantisek. <i>Lev D. Landau: his life and work</i>. No. CERN-79-03. CERN, 1979.</li></ul></li> <li>Once, lecturing in Moscow during his last visit to the USSR, <a href="/wiki/Niels_Bohr" title="Niels Bohr">Niels Bohr</a> was asked how he had succeeded in creating such a famous and first-class school of theoretical physics. He answered: "Probably because I have never been ashamed of admitting to my students that I am a fool." Bohr's lecture was translated into Russian by Landau's closest collaborator, E. Lifshitz, who translated it: "Probably because I have never been ashamed to tell my students that they are fools." Lifshitz's mistranslation caused a lot of laughter among the listeners. Lifshitz became aware of his mistake, corrected himself, and apologized. Kapitza, who was present, remarked that this mistranslation had not been accidental at all: "Precisely here lies the difference between Bohr's and Landau's schools of theoretical physics." <ul><li>Janouch, Frantisek. <i>Lev D. Landau: his life and work</i>. No. CERN-79-03. CERN, 1979.</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Lev_Landau&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: External links"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <div class="noprint" style="clear: right; border: solid #aaa 1px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em; font-size: 90%; background: #f9f9f9; width: 250px; padding: 4px; spacing: 0px; text-align: left; float: right;"> <div style="float: left;"><figure class="mw-halign-none" typeof="mw:File"><a href="/wiki/File:Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg" class="mw-file-description" title="Wikipedia"><img alt="Wikipedia" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/50px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png" decoding="async" width="50" height="46" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/75px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/100px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="103" data-file-height="94" /></a><figcaption>Wikipedia</figcaption></figure></div> <div style="margin-left: 60px;"><a href="/wiki/Wikipedia" title="Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a> has an article about: <div style="margin-left: 10px;"><i><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Landau" class="extiw" title="wikipedia:Lev Landau">Lev Landau</a></b></i></div> </div> </div>    </div><noscript><img src="https://login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?useformat=desktop&type=1x1&usesul3=0" alt="" width="1" height="1" style="border: none; position: absolute;"></noscript> <div class="printfooter" data-nosnippet="">Retrieved from "<a dir="ltr" href="https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Lev_Landau&oldid=3607832">https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Lev_Landau&oldid=3607832</a>"</div></div> <div id="catlinks" class="catlinks" data-mw="interface"><div id="mw-normal-catlinks" class="mw-normal-catlinks"><a href="/wiki/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories">Categories</a>: <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Category:1908_births" title="Category:1908 births">1908 births</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:1968_deaths" title="Category:1968 deaths">1968 deaths</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Nobel_laureates_in_Physics" title="Category:Nobel laureates in Physics">Nobel laureates in Physics</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Nobel_laureates_from_the_Soviet_Union" title="Category:Nobel laureates from the Soviet Union">Nobel laureates from the Soviet Union</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Academics_from_Russia" title="Category:Academics from Russia">Academics from Russia</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Cosmologists" title="Category:Cosmologists">Cosmologists</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Physicists_from_the_Soviet_Union" title="Category:Physicists from the Soviet Union">Physicists from the Soviet Union</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Physicists_from_Russia" title="Category:Physicists from Russia">Physicists from Russia</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Russian_Jews" title="Category:Russian Jews">Russian Jews</a></li><li><a href="/wiki/Category:Atheists_from_Russia" title="Category:Atheists from Russia">Atheists from Russia</a></li></ul></div></div> </div> </main> </div> <div class="mw-footer-container"> <footer id="footer" class="mw-footer" > <ul id="footer-info"> <li id="footer-info-lastmod"> This page was last edited on 31 October 2024, at 19:00.</li> <li id="footer-info-copyright">Text is available under the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License</a>; additional terms may apply. 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