Lev Landau

A prodigy from Baku who became the conscience of Soviet physics.

Lev Landau — known to everyone as “Dau” — entered university at fourteen, studied under Niels Bohr (the only man he ever called his teacher), and went on to reshape almost every branch of theoretical physics. He explained why liquid helium flows without friction, built the theory of phase transitions used across modern science, and trained a generation through an exam so hard only forty-three people ever passed it. He survived a year in Stalin’s Lubyanka prison and a catastrophic car crash, and in 1962 received the Nobel Prize from a hospital bed.