Lev Landau
Theoretical physicist: superfluidity and the Course of Theoretical Physics
He received the Nobel Prize in 1962, alone; the Swedish ambassador brought the medal to his Moscow hospital room—after the car crash of 7 January 1962 he never worked again.
He had nowhere and no reason to convert: he was a militant atheist. He was persecuted not as a Jew but as a political suspect: arrested on 27 April 1938, held in the Lubyanka until 29 April 1939, and released only because Pyotr Kapitsa vouched for him personally and threatened to resign, with a letter of support from Niels Bohr.
There is not one verified statement by him about Judaism or Israel, and none may be attributed: the 1965 letter on Soviet Jewry printed in the New York Times is of doubtful authorship. The answer "I think so" to the question whether God exists is reported by Tarkovsky—an anecdote, not testimony.
Sources
Scholarship
- NobelPrize.org, the 1962 Physics prize — the wording of the prize; the presentation in hospital
- Wikipedia, “Lev Landau” — the arrest of 27 April 1938 and Kapitsa's intervention
Basis: documents and evidence.