Two statements next to curly brace in an equation

You can try the cases env in amsmath.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

\begin{equation}
  f(x)=\begin{cases}
    1, & \text{if $x<0$}.\\
    0, & \text{otherwise}.
  \end{cases}
\end{equation}

\end{document}