Passion or Profession: Physicist

Period: 1908–1968

Landau was born in Baku and studied at Baku University and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University. Landau became the head of the Theoretical Department of the Institute for Physical Problems of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1937. For his theory on the superfluidity in helium II he developed there, Landau was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1962. A car accident that year ended his work. Landau died six years later.