Lev Pitaevskii

Lev Petrovich Pitajewski (Russian Лев Петрович Питаевский, English transcription, Lev Pitaevskii, * January 18, 1933 in Saratov ) is a Russian physicist.

Pitajewski studied up to the diploma at the University of Saratov and was from 1955 to 1962, a student of Lev Landau at the Institute for Physical Problems of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he received his doctorate in 1958. In 1964 he qualified as a professor there ( Russian doctoral degrees). He remained still at the Institute for Physical Problems (later Kapitsa Institute).

He is currently a professor at the University of Trento at the Center for Bose -Einstein condensates (BEC ). 1994 to 1998 he was a visiting professor at the Technion in Haifa, where he also received an honorary doctorate.

Pitajewski deals with quantum gases and specifically BEC. In 1961, he led the important in this context, Gross- Pitaevskii equation (regardless of EP Gross). In addition, he is engaged in, among others, the theory of elasticity.

He is a corresponding and full member since 1990 of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1976. In 1980 he was awarded the Landau Prize of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in 2008 the Landau Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1998 he is honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1994 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize and the 1997 Feenberg Memorial Award for many-body physics.

Writings

• Pitajewski is co-author of several volumes of the Landau - Lifshitz, the famous textbook series on theoretical physics by Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz: Vol 4 quantum electrodynamics with Berestetski and Lifschitz, Vol 9 ( Statistical Physics, second part ) and Volume 10 ( Physical Kinetics) each with Lifschitz.