Lev Davydovich Landau: Winner of the second Fritz London Award

I have been asked by the Committee for the Second Fritz London Award to give an account of the life and work of this eminent recipient of the Award, Lev Davydovich Landau. I was very honored that I had been asked to undertake this task but felt rather overwhelmed by the responsibility it entailed. Because Landau has contributed to so many fields of physics, an award could have been made to him at any one of several conferences in any one of several fields. The main problem, I found, was to limit myself primarily to Landau’s work in the field of low‐temperature physics for which this Award is made. My own work in this field has been so strongly influenced by these significant contributions that I, like so many of us similarly influenced, feel that I do know him, although I have never met him personally.

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