Leo Landau

Childhood
 

Lev Landau was born in 1908 in Baku, in the family of a refiner and a doctor. He was not the only child in the family, he had an older sister. Their mother paied much attention to the upbringing of beloved children, they took lessons of foreign languages( Franch and German), and then, they could speak them perfectly; they went in for gymnastics, learnt to play the piano, but non of the children loved music.

Everybody new, that since his early childhood Lev was gifted in Mathematics, but still, parents wanted him to become a well-educated person in many branches.

When Lev was six years old, he quarrelled with his father, and then, even being adult, Lev could not understand why his father wanted him to be a common boy, to go for a walk along those clean roads and paths, but not to sit in the wood-shed and to do summs. But still, it was so interesting and exciting to solve mathematical probelems he thought up himself!

Lev Davidovich even recalled that his father told him that Lev won´t be a good man, he will not be able to be useful. Lev Landau said: "I was afraid that my father could be right. That was a very bad moment in my childhood".

He was changing through the years, and when he was 10 Lev decided that it is not a pastime for a man to brush and to get a haircut. Later, his mother told that obstinacy and curiosity often accompany genius. But at that moment his father could do and predict nothing and he committed the upbringing of the boy to his mother, and father himself paied attention only to a daughter.

May be that was a crucial moment in the boy´s childhood which let him become a great scientist!