Lev Landau was born on 22nd January 1908 in the oil settlement of Balakhani, where his father served as a senior engineer in the oil company owned by the Rothschilds – the famous Jewish dynasty who played a great role in developing Baku’s oil industry. Later the Landaus moved to an apartment in this elegant Oil-Boom era building in central Baku, on the corner of Samad Vurghun and Nizami streets. The young Landau showed a great talent for science from early childhood and at the age of just 14 was admitted to Baku State University, where he studied physics and chemistry. In 1924 he left Baku to study theoretical physics at Leningrad State University, where he graduated in 1927. During his working life he served as head of the physics department of the National Scientific Centre at the Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkiv, and later of the theoretical department of the Institute for Physical Problems of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow. Landau was revered as a teacher and became world-famous after his many discoveries and theories in topics such as nuclear theory, solid-state physics, quantum field theory and astrophysics.