Now the capital of Azerbaijan, Landau's hometown was, at that time, part of the Soviet Union. His parents were educated and well-to-do Russians; his father was a petroleum engineer at one of Baku's oil fields, his mother, independent and educated far beyond the standards for women of that time. She became, first, a midwife, before going on to become a physician, working during World War I as a field doctor and later as a teacher. One of Landau's biographers, Anna Livanova, writes in
Landau: A Great Physicist and Teacher that "it may have been her example that gave Landau the foundation of his own versatility, his calling as both scientist and teacher." Lev also had a sister, Sofia, some years his senior, who became a chemical engineer.
Although he would later deny that he had been a child prodigy, he demonstrated that he was advanced at an early age when he finished school at age 13. He thought to study maths and physics, subjects that he loved, but his parents decided to send him, with his sister, for a year to an economics college since he was still very young. In 1922, he enrolled in the University of Baku in the faculties of math and physics and of chemistry.
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