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Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

physics.stackexchange.com

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Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#11

Post by MontyCarloHall »

elcritch wrote: post #10
nologic01 wrote: post #9

Fairly comprehensive, highly technical but hardly inspiring or insightful. Old-fashioned, austere ( The classical theory of fields has like a handful of diagrams). The polar opposite of the "Pleasure of finding things out" of Feynman. Or the incongruous visual orgy and outright speculation of Gravitation . Of-course the interesting question is which educational / pedagogical approach works "best". Alas that is almost…

It makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?

His students were successful enough that nine of them have their own articles on English Wikipedia. Many more (>20) have articles on Russian Wikipedia.

Amongst the nine students who have English Wikipedia articles, one won a Nobel [0]. The others have all won highly prestigious physics prizes, and all appear to be major contributors to their subfields. One even has a class of subatomic particles named after him [1].

Was Landau's pedagogical approach optimal? Impossible to say. Was it extremely successful? Objectively, yes, without a doubt.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Abrikosov_(physicist)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomeron

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#12

Post by varjag »

elcritch wrote: post #10
nologic01 wrote: post #9

Fairly comprehensive, highly technical but hardly inspiring or insightful. Old-fashioned, austere ( The classical theory of fields has like a handful of diagrams). The polar opposite of the "Pleasure of finding things out" of Feynman. Or the incongruous visual orgy and outright speculation of Gravitation . Of-course the interesting question is which educational / pedagogical approach works "best". Alas that is almost…

It makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?

At least one has the prize and many others are internationally recognized for their contributions.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#13

Post by varjag »

belter wrote: post #2

Landau's Theoretical Minimum, Landau's Seminar, ITEP in the Beginning of the 1950's - https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0204295v1 "...In the worst cases, when the speaker failed a few times, he was ostracized — excluded from the list of the seminar participants, and Landau would refuse to have discussions with him, but, of course, he (the ostracized person) could attend seminars. (I remember two such cases — in one case t…

Time in GULag makes people grumpy.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#14

Post by belter »

elcritch wrote: post #10
nologic01 wrote: post #9

Fairly comprehensive, highly technical but hardly inspiring or insightful. Old-fashioned, austere ( The classical theory of fields has like a handful of diagrams). The polar opposite of the "Pleasure of finding things out" of Feynman. Or the incongruous visual orgy and outright speculation of Gravitation . Of-course the interesting question is which educational / pedagogical approach works "best". Alas that is almost…

It makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?

One of them was Lex Fridman Father.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#15

Post by zeroonetwothree »

elcritch wrote: post #10
nologic01 wrote: post #9

Fairly comprehensive, highly technical but hardly inspiring or insightful. Old-fashioned, austere ( The classical theory of fields has like a handful of diagrams). The polar opposite of the "Pleasure of finding things out" of Feynman. Or the incongruous visual orgy and outright speculation of Gravitation . Of-course the interesting question is which educational / pedagogical approach works "best". Alas that is almost…

It makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?

Nobel prizes are highly political and random. It’s like judging programming skill by who won the startup lottery.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#17

Post by aleph_minus_one »

imranq wrote: post #3

I've skimmed through the Landau books and while they are technically excellent, they lack a sense of feeling and motivation which makes it hard to self study from. It felt like a slog across random topics with no application

> I've skimmed through the Landau books and while they are technically excellent, they lack a sense of feeling and motivation which makes it hard to self study from.

A person that I know who has a doctoral degree in pysics and loves the Landau-Lifshitz books said: "If you need such an external motivation (for reading the Landau-Lifshitz books), you simply do not have sufficient inner drive for studying physics. Find another major that better is a better fit for you."

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#19

Post by hsjqllzlfkf »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #15
elcritch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?

Nobel prizes are highly political and random. It’s like judging programming skill by who won the startup lottery.

Say the bitter losers.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#20

Post by guptadagger »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #17
imranq wrote: post #3

I've skimmed through the Landau books and while they are technically excellent, they lack a sense of feeling and motivation which makes it hard to self study from. It felt like a slog across random topics with no application

> I've skimmed through the Landau books and while they are technically excellent, they lack a sense of feeling and motivation which makes it hard to self study from. A person that I know who has a doctoral degree in pysics and loves the Landau-Lifshitz books said: "If you need such an external motivation (for reading the Landau-Lifshitz books), you simply do not have sufficient inner drive for studying physics. Find…

I think this 100% true, you don't read those books for any pleasure, its simply a necessary part of an education in theoretical physics. rigorous and challenging
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