Google doodle honours Soviet-Era Physicist Lev Landau on 111th birth anniversary

Washington, Jan 22: The giant search engine Google on Tuesday honoured Soviet era physicist Lev Landau on his 111th birth anniversary with a special doodle.

Lev Landau was a Soviet physicist who made some of the fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.

The coveted Nobel prize was conferred upon him in 1962, for the groundbreaking research into the behaviour liquid helium when subjected to extremely low temperatures.

Landau was born on 22 January 1908 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Landau's father was an engineer with the local oil industry and his mother was a doctor. In 1922, at age 14, he matriculated at the Baku State University, studying in two departments simultaneously: the Departments of Physics and Mathematics, and the Department of Chemistry. In 1937, Landau married Kora T. Drobanzeva from Kharkiv.

In 1924, Landau moved to the main centre of Soviet physics, the Physics Department of Leningrad State University, and dedicated himself to the study of theoretical physics, graduating. Between 1932 and 1937, Landau headed the Department of Theoretical Physics at the National Scientific Center Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1932, Landau computed the Chandrashekhar limit, however, he did not apply it to white dwarf stars.

Landau died on 1 April 1968, aged 60, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.