Lev Landau, Topmost Soviet Jewish Scientist, Wins Nobel Prize

Dr. Lev Davidovic Landau, undoubtedly the topmost Jewish scientist, in the Soviet Union, and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize, was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physics at a meeting of the Swedish Academy of Science here today. His citation specified his “pioneering theories for condensed matter, especially liquid helium. ” Credited with having contributed materially to the development of satellites, especially toward the launching of earth’s first satellite, the Soviet Sputnik I, in 1957, he is widely regarded as one of the world’s most advanced thinkers in the field of nuclear studies and cosmic rays.

Dr. Landau is still in a Moscow hospital, as a result of an automobile accident last January. For a time, there were fears that the crash would prove fatal, Neurosurgeons, other specialists and “wonder” drugs were flown by the Soviet Government to Moscow from Britain, Canada and France to help save him. He was reported today as “making progress, ” but there were still doubts as to whether he might regain his full intellectual capacity.

A spokesman here for the Soviet Academy of Science, of which Dr. Landau is a member, said the news was relayed to the physicist at the Moscow hospital, and that he was “very excited. ” In addition to signifying world recognition, the prize now is worth nearly $50,000. A Soviet spokesman here said congratulatory messages have come in on the award to Dr. Landau “from around the world. “

Born in Baku in 1908, Dr. Landau studied at Leningrad, worked at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, where he contributed important theoretical papers on magnetism, taught at the University of Kharkov for five years, and settled in Moscow in 1937.