4 ms·
Fairly comprehensive, highly technical but hardly inspiring or insightful. Old-fashioned, austere (The classical theory of fields has like a handful of diagrams
by nologic01 3y ago
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.
- elcritch 3y agoIt makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?
- MontyCarloHall 3y agoHis 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Abrikosov_(physicist) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomeron
- Panoramix 3y agoIs 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 3y agoOP 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.
- lr1970 3y agoTo complete the analysis we should look at the achievements of those who failed the Theoretical Minimum.
- jojobas 3y agoWell how many Nobel prize winners did Feynmann bring up?
- mif 3y agoArnold 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Sommerfeld
- defrost 3y agoThe important question here is how many went on to become gold medal winter olympians.
- varjag 3y agoAt least one has the prize and many others are internationally recognized for their contributions.
- belter 3y agoOne of them was Lex Fridman Father.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoNobel prizes are highly political and random. It’s like judging programming skill by who won the startup lottery.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoSay the bitter losers.
- MengerSponge 3y agoRarely 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.
- wbl 3y agoThere is more work than can win the Nobel then prizes to hand out and some awards are mystifying like the one for the automatic navigation aid light.
- kelipso 3y ago[flagged]
- trott 3y agoI 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.
- nologic01 3y agoMy 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.
- cyber_kinetist 3y agoFeynman wrote at least one book aimed at the graduate level, “Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals”: https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Path-Integrals-Emended/dp/0486477223 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.
- beezle 3y agoIt 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.