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L. D. Landau (1908–1968)

Author of Mechanics

87 Works 2,157 Members 14 Reviews 2 Favorited

About the Author

Lev Davidovich Landau was born on January 22, 1908 in Baku, U.S.S.R (now Azerbaijan). A brilliant student, he had finished secondary school by the age of 13. He enrolled in the University of Baku a year later, in 1922, and later transferred to the University of Leningrad, from which he graduated show more with a degree in physics. Landau did graduate work in physics at Leningrad's Physiotechnical Institute, at Cambridge University in England, and at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Denmark, where he met physicist Neils Bohr, whose work he greatly admired. Landau worked in the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program during World War II, and then began a teaching career. Considered to be the founder of a whole school of Soviet theoretical physicists, Landau was honored with numerous awards, including the Lenin Prize, the Max Planck Medal, the Fritz London Prize, and, most notably, the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physics, which honored his pioneering work in the field of low-temperature physics and condensed matter, particularly liquid helium. Unfortunately, Landau's wife and son had to accept the Nobel Prize for him; Landau had been seriously injured in a car crash several months earlier and never completely recovered. He was unable to work again, and spent the remainder of his years, until his death in 1968, battling health problems resulting from the accident. Landau's most notable written work is his Course of Theoretical Physics, an eight-volume set of texts covering the complete range of theoretical physics. Like several other of Landau's books, it was written with Evgeny Lifshitz, a favorite student, because Landau himself strongly disliked writing. Some other works include What is Relativity?, Theory of Elasticity, and Physics for Everyone. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Lev Landau

Series

Works by L. D. Landau

Mechanics (1969) 396 copies, 4 reviews
The Classical Theory of Fields (1971) 327 copies, 2 reviews
Statistical Physics, Part 1 (1969) 258 copies
Quantum Mechanics: Non-Relativistic Theory (1977) 253 copies, 2 reviews
Fluid Mechanics (1953) 200 copies
What Is Relativity? (1961) 157 copies, 6 reviews
Theory of Elasticity (1970) 141 copies
Quantum Electrodynamics (1982) 109 copies
Lectures on Nuclear Theory (1959) 19 copies
Teoria do campo 2 copies
Mecánica 1 copy
Mecânica 1 copy
Physique statistique (1991) 1 copy
Molčulas 1 copy
Mechanik 1 copy
Quantentheorie (1975) 1 copy

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Common Knowledge

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Reviews

17 reviews
As was his previous volume, it is extremely concise on certain topics (so that you will be left to do the necessary legwork yourself) and more verbose on very specific topics. However, its concision does lend itself to showing the simple core of the theory. It is definitely recommended that this text be accompanied by those that are more verbose (and provide more problem sets) in the areas of general relativity and electrodynamics.
This is the perfect example of why suffering any form of brain trauma is a bad plan. Once upon a time, I could *almost* keep up with this series. Now... I can sometimes almost remember what keeping up with this was like. When I was able to keep up, it was awesome. It's still awesome from a layman's perspective, but I have to spend ages running the numbers now, instead of, "This makes sense," And just know I'm good to go.

Grr. Yay. And more yay, since I actually sat down to re-read some and show more more or less kept up without having my brain squirm. show less
The definitive work on the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulation of mechanics. Be wary that you should have a working knowledge of differential geometry or a mastery of analytic geometry as it will be fully applied to physical problems. It is also very dense, but very well written. By density, one means that a typical sentence contains the information that an entire chapter in an undergraduate text would spend time expounding. It is up to the mature reader to motivate any necessary show more expansion of the material presented in the text. show less
I am mindful of the fact that the speed of light is not constant the records show they fixed it.

I came across this book watching Brian Mullin on YT who was doing a great job questioning the accepted wisdom of science. Nothing in science is settled anyone claiming this or that is a fact is delusional.

Hard to take books like this seriously anymore.

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Statistics

Works
87
Members
2,157
Popularity
#11,915
Rating
4.0
Reviews
14
ISBNs
201
Languages
10
Favorited
2

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