ABSTRACT
Lev Davidovich Landau was only 54 (short of two weeks) when, on 7 January 1962, he met with a car accident. Landau lived for six more years (he died on 1 April, 1968) but, in those years, he was a very sick man and was totally unable to work. Thus, as a physicist he left us about 30 years ago and, hence, today only those older than 45 or so remember him as a physicist and especially his famous seminars. For t he younger generation of physicists (and they are the majority), Landau and everything related to him have become a legend, a living legend so to say, since many of his papers and especially his books are still widely used. For this reason (and several others), the interest in his life as that of a remarkable physicist and an outstanding personality remains. The best way to satisfy this interest is to read the book Landau: The Physicist and the Man. 1 However, not all is covered in this book and stories about Landau are still very popular. For instance, more than 200 people gathered to listen to my recent report about Landau's life as a physicist (I presented this report on 9 September, 1992, at my weekly theoretical seminar held at FIAN, the P N Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences). It was on the basis of this report the magazine Priroda [Nature] suggested I write the present paper.
