In 1924, Landau transferred to the University of Leningrad to enroll in its department of physics. There, he attended classes twice weekly and spent the rest of the time pursuing his own lines of research and "dreaming formulae." While still an undergraduate, in 1926, Landau also became a supernumerary graduate student at Leningrad's Physicotechnical Institute. That same year, his first scientific paper, "On the Theory of the Spectra of Diatomic Molecules," was published to considerable interest.
Upon graduating from the university the following year, he joined the Physicotechnical Institute as a fully fledged graduate student. This was where he first came into contact with a group of other theoreticians and with "big physics," as the new quantum mechanics was known. He avidly read scientific papers written by the leading lights of nuclear physics, which enabled him to keep abreast of developments in Western Europe, the heartland of the new physics. Characteristic of him then and throughout his life was his extraordinary critical sense and his complete independence of thought. A paper published by him in 1927, when he was still only 19, on "The Damping Problem in Wave Mechanics," amply demonstrated that he was far from run of the mill.
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