Nobel foundation · Public domain

Lev Landau is considered one of the last physicists to be seriously versed across the whole field, with foundational work spanning condensed matter physics, quantum mechanics, superconductivity, and plasma physics — theories that still carry his name, including the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics and the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining superfluidity, the frictionless flow of liquid helium below about -271°C, through a mathematical theory he developed largely on his own.