Google celebrates physicist Lev Davidovich Landau, who has a crater on the moon named after him, with doodle

Google marked Soviet theoretical physicist Lev Davidovich Landau's 111th birth anniversary with a doodle. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1908, Landau won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research into liquid helium’s behaviour at extremely low temperatures.

He was also elected to the U.S.S.R.’s Academy of Sciences in 1946, and received the Lenin Science Prize for his Course of Theoretical Physics — a ten-volume study co-written with his student Evgeny Lifshitz.

It's not just these recognitions that honour the legendary physicist, rather he also has a crater on the moon named after him. And then there's also the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow.


Landau, described by classmates as a “quiet, shy boy,”, was always brilliant at math and science. But social skills were never his strong point, and he struggled in relating to his other children his age. He completed his schooling when was just 13 years old, and completed his Ph.D by the time he was 21.

Landau studied Physics at the Leningrad University. During his Ph.D, he had earned a Rockefeller fellowship and a Soviet stipend which let him visit research facilities in Cambridge, Copenhagen, and Zurich - where he studied with Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr, who had a profound impact on young Landau.

His first publication, 'On the Theory of the Spectra of Diatomic Molecules' went to print when he was just 18-years-old.

Google wrote in its blogpost, "His wide-ranging research has linked his name to many concepts that he was first to describe including: Landau Levels, which are the focus of today’s Doodle, Landau diamagnetism, Landau damping, and the Landau energy spectrum."

He passed away on April 1, 1968 due to complications from a car accident that had taken place six years prior to his death. He was 60-years-old.