[HN Gopher] Lev Landau's "Theoretical Minimum"
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Lev Landau's "Theoretical Minimum"
Author : belter
Score : 46 points
Date : 2023-07-01 15:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (physics.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (physics.stackexchange.com)
| gtsnexp wrote:
| It would be incredible to gain access to the archive of exams,
| particularly those administered during Landau's era. These must
| surely exist in paper format somewhere, right?
| nologic01 wrote:
| 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 impossible
| to define, let alone prove on the basis of the highly
| idiosyncratic development of physics in the 20th century.
| trott wrote:
| 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.
| elcritch wrote:
| It makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many
| achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| 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
| Panoramix wrote:
| 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.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| 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.
| varjag wrote:
| At least one has the prize and many others are
| internationally recognized for their contributions.
| belter wrote:
| One of them was Lex Fridman Father.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Nobel prizes are highly political and random. It's like
| judging programming skill by who won the startup lottery.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| Say the bitter losers.
| chinchilla_opt wrote:
| Perhaps going to war with this civilization is not a great idea.
| nuccy wrote:
| If by "this civilization" you mean Soviet Union, presuming
| modern Russia only, then FYI Ukraine is also part of that
| civilization.
| mepian wrote:
| I guess you would be relieved to learn that this civilization
| died decades ago, and the destroyed Buran orbiter is its
| tombstone.
| imranq wrote:
| 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
| mepian wrote:
| 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.
| smueller1234 wrote:
| There's a reason the profs love Landau/Lifshitz. The books
| have a certain elegance that, once you have a decent
| understanding of the subject already, is easy to appreciate.
| But as a first year theory student, that's just not what you
| need.
|
| Went through the same experience you describe. But enjoyed
| them when I picked them up again a few years later.
| yodon wrote:
| The key is to make sure you're reading books by Landau and
| Lifshitz. Landau was more the famous as a theoretician,
| Lifshitz was the better writer.
|
| That said, these are definitely books to read when you're in
| the mindset of studying for PhD doctoral exams in Physics. I
| loved them at the time but would definitely have a hard time
| curling up by the fire with them on a rainy afternoon.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >Landau was more the famous as a theoretician, Lifshitz was
| the better writer.
|
| As the famous quip goes, "not a word of Landau and not a
| thought of Lifshitz."
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > 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."
| guptadagger wrote:
| 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
| belter wrote:
| 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 the speaker
| was a famous physicist, V.G. Levich, who eventually became a
| Member of the Academy of Sciences). Only after a long time, a
| year or more, and after being advocated by the most respected
| seminar participants, could such a person be pardoned by
| Landau..."
| varjag wrote:
| Time in GULag makes people grumpy.
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