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Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

physics.stackexchange.com

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Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#21

Post by trott »

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…

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 and definitely answered -- general words or statements like “the author claims ...” were not accepted."

That said, Landau's Theoretical Physics textbook is graduate-level. Feynman wrote an undergraduate Physics textbook. And some other things Feynman wrote might have been for even wider audiences.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#22

Post by Panoramix »

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].…

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.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#24

Post by MontyCarloHall »

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.

OP was questioning whether Landau’s method of identifying the most gifted students actually selected for successful physicists:

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

So yes, it is selection bias by definition, but the point is that the method of selection worked. Most other professors at the most prestigious schools in the world could only dream of advising anything close to Landau’s academic descendants.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#26

Post by max_ »

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).

The Feynman lectures are definitely easier to understand. I could pick something from them.

And more fun to read.

Course of Theoretical Physics is too "cold". It however seems more comprehensive. As it looks to contain more material.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#27

Post by asimeqi »

mepian wrote: post #7
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 remember trying to read the first tome of Landau and Lifshitz in my first year of studying at the physics department and instantly bouncing off. The textbooks of Irodov, Savelyev, and Sivukhin were much more approachable.

The first volume is "Mechanics" as in Theoretical Mechanics. It's a second or third year Physics course not a first year one. I took it third year, it was mostly fine. The treatment of Hamilton-Jacobi equation lacked motivation but it wasn't super difficult. I also took volume 2, "Classical Theory of Fields". That was much, much harder. Anything after that seemed unreachable.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#28

Post by MengerSponge »

hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #19
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Say the bitter losers.

Rarely does anybody credible say "It's bullshit that they won the prize. I should have won the prize!"

Much more often people say "So that prize was bullshit... $OTHER should have won it instead."

Lise Meitner is a classic example. Chien-Shiung Wu is another.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#29

Post by nologic01 »

trott wrote: post #21
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…

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…

My hunch is this filter would be particularly bad for true talent but would be quite good to populate the workhorse ranks. Which would not a small feat. Underneath the exalted world of Class I scientists that open new vistas, the bread and butter in any field is the adaptation and application of techniques to "nearby" problems.

Curiously there isnt a complete graduate level physics textbook collection in the modern style. Only individual examples here and there from different authors.

With the heyday of physics and textbooks behind us its unlikely we see that ever happening.

Re: Lev Landau's “Theoretical Minimum”

#30

Post by wbl »

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).

Feynman was trying to teach the first three years of physics by mixing the splits between topics. It's far less comprehensive than L&L.
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