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Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

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Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#51

Post by ogurechny »

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.

Many groups that select people for arbitrary reasons exist. Sure, here we see external cause and zealous dedication, but those things don't automatically make anything good. We then have to decide whether “advancement of scientific knowledge” should be seen as some kind of royal mantle (and by whom). And so on, and so forth.

It is easier to compare it to professional sport. Not only athletes have natural talents, they also participate in training that would be useless or harmful for everyone else. Only then they can reach the record setting zone.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#52

Post by freefaler »

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…

What memoir you're referring to? A.Ioffe didn't write one as far as my research shows.

My bad... Boris Ioffe (not related to A. Ioffe) has indeed written a memoir:

Иоффе Б. Л. Без ретуши. Портреты физиков на фоне эпохи. —М.: ФАЗИС, 2004; 160 с. ISBN 5-7036-0088-Х

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#53

Post by mif »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #11
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?

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].…

Arnold Sommerfeld was supposedly a great educator and a likeable teacher.

From Wikipedia: “ He invited collaboration from them, and their ideas often influenced his own views in physics. He entertained them in his home and met with them in cafes before and after seminars and colloquia. Sommerfeld owned an alpine ski hut to which students were often invited for discussions of physics as demanding as the sport.” [1]

Four of his doctoral and three of his post-doctoral students went on to become Nobel prize winners. That’s a lot of Nobel prize winners.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Sommerfeld

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#54

Post by defrost »

mif wrote: post #53
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].…

Arnold Sommerfeld was supposedly a great educator and a likeable teacher. From Wikipedia: “ He invited collaboration from them, and their ideas often influenced his own views in physics. He entertained them in his home and met with them in cafes before and after seminars and colloquia. Sommerfeld owned an alpine ski hut to which students were often invited for discussions of physics as demanding as the sport.” [1] Fo…

The important question here is how many went on to become gold medal winter olympians.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#55

Post by sigsergv »

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).

That book was often referred as Landavshitz among students. Fantastic series.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#56

Post by aleph_minus_one »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #48
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mathematici…

> don't you just love it when people with "doctoral" degrees meme?

This was not intended as some kind of meme by him. He really is like that. The mention of his doctoral degree in physics has just the relevance that he is not to be considered a crackpot.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#57

Post by beezle »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #37
trott wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt that visual is better than text-only and austere, by any metric, except one: filtering out those with less commitment. Laundau himself didn't have much patience for struggling to understand dense language, according to Ioffe's account: "Landau knew well all subjects (despite the fact that he almost did not read papers, only listened to their presentations) and put questions which had to be immediately…

Feynman wrote at least one book aimed at the graduate level, “Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals”: https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Path-Integrals-Emen... Haven’t really read it so don’t know if its lucidity matches his undergraduate series.

It is a good book, have it in hard cover.

Feynman indirectly wrote quite a few graduate level texts such as The Theory of Fundamental Processes, Statistical Mechanics Lecture Notes and Photon-hadron Interactions which are compilations of lecture notes re-written in book form. There is also one on gravitation dating to the early 1960s.

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