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Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

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Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#41

Post by jojobas »

Panoramix wrote: post #22
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].…

Is that not just selection bias? Makes sense that the most gifted students at the most prestigious school over a span of 30 years went on to have great careers.

Well how many Nobel prize winners did Feynmann bring up?

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#42

Post by vitehozonage »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #32
dannylandau wrote: post #25

Anyone read the Livshitz-Landau textbooks? Any thoughts on them and how the compare to the Feynman Lecture series? P.S. No immediate relation to Landau (and family name is really Livshitz).

They are incredibly dense. Like, it assumes you are already an expert on the topic and you need a high level refresher.

Accurate. I had a immigrant Russian professor in undergrad QM whom provided no notes, I could barely understand anything he said, and he just said to use L&L as the course book when people asked for help. I spent hours trying to read it but it was utterly useless. Worst studying experience I ever had

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#43

Post by i-use-nixos-btw »

It’s a strange feeling reading Ioffe’s memoir.

When I was a physics undergraduate, I understood the mentality. The high-maintenance asshole professor was exactly who I’d be drawn towards. I learned how unhealthy that was, and many of those who didn’t ended up burning out HARD.

Landau was the rare asshole whose ability to hone students was worth the abuse. And reading this, I found myself in the frame of mind of “yeah, in that scenario, I’d absolutely work my ass off just to be in that guy’s favour”.

Years training myself out of that unhealthy mentality and boom, a few pages of memoir and I’m back in that naive frame of mind.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#44

Post by elteto »

i-use-nixos-btw wrote: post #43

It’s a strange feeling reading Ioffe’s memoir. When I was a physics undergraduate, I understood the mentality. The high-maintenance asshole professor was exactly who I’d be drawn towards. I learned how unhealthy that was, and many of those who didn’t ended up burning out HARD. Landau was the rare asshole whose ability to hone students was worth the abuse. And reading this, I found myself in the frame of mind of “yeah…

We are seduced and captivated by raw genius. I’m sure Landau was one of the highest caliber. To pass his examination, to be well regarded by him, to be part of such a select group, who wouldn’t want to? Don’t be hard on yourself.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#46

Post by sdenton4 »

elteto wrote: post #44
i-use-nixos-btw wrote: post #43

It’s a strange feeling reading Ioffe’s memoir. When I was a physics undergraduate, I understood the mentality. The high-maintenance asshole professor was exactly who I’d be drawn towards. I learned how unhealthy that was, and many of those who didn’t ended up burning out HARD. Landau was the rare asshole whose ability to hone students was worth the abuse. And reading this, I found myself in the frame of mind of “yeah…

We are seduced and captivated by raw genius. I’m sure Landau was one of the highest caliber. To pass his examination, to be well regarded by him, to be part of such a select group, who wouldn’t want to? Don’t be hard on yourself.

I don't even know that it's even raw genius - our brains are full of 'ape shit' which at times includes close attention to hierarchy. Seems likely to be a combination of charisma, ape-dominance, and enough smarts to be a good physics researcher.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#47

Post by bryan0 »

beefman wrote: post #45

Susskind taught a series of courses at Stanford Continuing Studies called The Theoretical Minimum, in homage to Landau. The lectures are all on YouTube https://theoreticalminimum.com/

There’s also an excellent series of books by Susskind of the same name.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#48

Post by mathisfun123 »

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…

don't you just love it when people with "doctoral" degrees meme? this is a really bad paraphrasal of the apocryphal story about hilbert:

"There is a much quoted story about David Hilbert, who one day noticed that a certain student had stopped attending class. When told that the student had decided to drop mathematics to become a poet, Hilbert replied, “Good — he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician.”

— Robert Osserman (US mathematician, 1926 – 2011)"

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#50

Post by steppi »

dannylandau wrote: post #25

Anyone read the Livshitz-Landau textbooks? Any thoughts on them and how the compare to the Feynman Lecture series? P.S. No immediate relation to Landau (and family name is really Livshitz).

In undergrad I took a graduate class out of Calculus of Variations by Gelfand and Fomin [0] that went deep into the math of classical mechanics but assumed students already knew the relevant physics. I hadn't taken a proper classical mechanics class, and working through Volume 1 of Livshitz-Landau in parallel with the lectures helped to ground the material for me. A brilliant classmate who’s now a successful mathematical physicist had recommended the series.

Later I tried to learn Quantum Mechanics while taking a course on Operator Theory, but gave up on using Volume 3 of Livshitz-Landau because it was just too impenetrable. I ended up going with Sakurai instead.

I found Volume 1 to be beautiful read and felt like I was learning something profound. Volume 3 was beyond me. The only thing I'd say these books have in common with the Feynman Lectures is a dearth of exercises. This wasn't an issue for me reading Volume 1 of LL because that Calculus of Variations course had many exercises which I just wasn't in a position to appreciate without knowing more Physics.

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