Lev Landau: Impure Science

Lev Landau (born January 22, 1908)

Lev Landau’s biography is shrouded in legend, myth, and firsthand accounts that seem beyond belief. His is the story of an ideal scientist. In essence, it is the story of what it means to be a true scholar.

A renowned physicist, he was perhaps one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, although, having a penchant for classification, he ranked himself a 2.0 among physicists, putting himself in a class below Niels Bohr (in whose Institute for Theoretical Physics Landau worked as a young man) and the other fathers of quantum mechanics, whom he assigned a 1.0 (he gave Einstein a 0.5).

A man who not only achieved momentous discoveries in physics, earning himself a Nobel Prize in 1962, he also came up with a fundamentally new way of teaching science and was idolized by several generations of students, from among whose ranks a few dozen managed to pass seven exacting examinations designed by Landau – the “theoretical minimum” – and attain the honor of becoming his pupils.

A scientist who not only made revolutionary theoretical contributions to physics, he also possessed almost unbelievable mathematical abilities (he is famously quoted as saying “I learned to integrate at 13, but I always knew how to differentiate”).

Laudau was able to perform the most complex calculations at incredible speeds, instantaneously find errors in his pupils’ intricate constructions, and keep numerous multilevel formulas in his head at the same time. Such tales are told about other great physicists as well – Kapitsa, Bohr, Rutherford. But Landau was a special case. By all accounts, he was an overgrown child who possessed remarkable abilities. Completely inept when it came to practical matters, he was remarkably kind, but also capable of devastating sarcasm when it came to scientific theory or poorly formulated assertions. His pupils quivered as they submitted their work to the teacher’s judgment, but they could always count on his help and support.

He was impeccably honest in all matters, but he was also a child of the times, having authored an article entitled The Bourgeoisie and Modern Physics in the 1930s. He participated in the creation of the atomic bomb, but immediately withdrew from the project after Stalin’s death, saying that now he could do so without fear.

A scholar who put scientific achievement above all else, over the warnings and objections of friends he admitted a scoundrel and anti-Semite into his seminar since he had managed to pass the “theoretical minimum,” while other, more companionable candidates had failed. It was clear at the time that this person would bring Landau a great deal of unpleasantness, and he did, but he had passed the test, so he could not be refused.

Landau was a genuine member of the intelligentsia, someone who did not confine himself to his narrow field but was extremely knowledgeable in the arts and could recite line after line of verse from memory. Outside science, people found his company extremely congenial. As a professor, he told his students that he hated to be addressed formally as Lev Davidovich, since his real name was Dau, and that was what he wanted to be called.

Others came to Landau’s defense even under the most dangerous of circumstances. His arrest in 1938 provided another genius, Pyotr Kapitsa, the opportunity to demonstrate his bravery and nobility. During the Great Terror, when most people preferred to erase the names of arrested friends and relatives from their memories, Kapitsa dared to write letters to Stalin and Beria asserting that Landau was a man thoroughly engrossed in science who would be incapable of doing anything bad. Kapitsa managed to get word of what had happened to Niels Bohr, who also interceded on behalf of his pupil. As a result, Landau’s life was saved. By his own account, Landau naively explained to his investigator that there was no way he could have maintained contact, as alleged, with female German spies since he was a Jew, and the Nazis strictly prohibited close relations between Jews and Aryan women (further evidence of how out of touch with real life this genius was).

Landau was a powerful gravitational force, the source of which was not just his genius, but also his intellect, sense of humor, and kindness. Many women fell into this gravitational field. Now, one hundred years after his birth, forty years after his death, the odd looking but inexpressibly charming Dau is still paying the price for his many loves.

My Husband the Genius is the name of a made for television movie produced in honor of Landau’s centennial and based on the memoirs of his wife, Cora. For some reason it is being called a documentary, although all the roles are played, naturally, by actors. A huge controversy broke out even before the film was shown, when Landau’s pupils – top physicists every last one – as well as the presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences appealed to Channel One not to broadcast the film, which they claimed tarnished the memory of the great scientist. The movie was, of course, shown anyway, and a talk show broadcast before the film, of course, only served to fan the flames.

Landau’s supporters said that no one should watch the film, that it was the product of his widow’s wild imaginings and had nothing to do with reality. The film’s creators (which included some wonderful actors) said that people should watch the film, that it was made with a sense of love for Landau, and that they wanted to portray the genius in all his complexity. Landau’s son Igor stated that the film had absolutely nothing to do with his father.

I cannot tell you how I felt about the film for the simple reason that I could not muster the patience to watch it for more than five minutes. It was simply too tedious to follow the twists and turns in the life of a sex-crazed egotistical neurasthenic. I suspect that many other viewers did what I did – simply turned off their television sets. But I’m afraid that many more viewers sat riveted to their screens to the very end.

For several days after it was shown, the mini-series was the hottest topic in the Russian blogosphere. Did Landau really have an agreement with his wife that their marriage would be completely open? Was it really true that he told her about all of his lovers and that he had mapped out a schedule of his rendezvous with them, which he stuck to no matter what? It appears that there was some truth to all these stories, although everyone close to Landau insist that love was an important part of Dau’s life, that he was not constantly falling in and out of love and that he took his love affairs extremely seriously.

But really – who cares? I have no desire whatsoever to know anything about Landau’s “schedule” and whether or not he ever locked his wife in a closet. Or, perhaps I should put it this way: I’m prepared to read about all that so long as it is all in the context of the life of a genius, and not of a maniac. But what is truly a shame is that now, for thousands of people, Landau will first and foremost be not a Nobel laureate, not someone who conducted a legendary seminar that shaped generations of physicists, not a great scientist, but a proponent of open marriage. It looks as if Cora Landau got what she wanted. Now everyone will see her life with Landau through her eyes.