Course of Theoretical Physics

The Course of Theoretical Physics is a ten-volume series of books covering <a href="/facts/Theoretical_physics/Cs2Y12rQ">theoretical physics</a> that was initiated by <a href="/facts/Lev_Landau/lNXQTC49">Lev Landau</a> and written in collaboration with his student <a href="/facts/Evgeny_Lifshitz/Rxkco1qP">Evgeny Lifshitz</a> starting in the late 1930s.
It is said that Landau composed much of the series in his head while in an <a href="/facts/NKVD/IA8Nwh1T">NKVD</a> prison in 1938–1939. However, almost all of the actual writing of the early volumes was done by Lifshitz, giving rise to the witticism, "not a word of Landau and not a thought of Lifshitz". The first eight volumes were finished in the 1950s, written in <a href="/facts/Russian_language/ETXrTgHV">Russian</a> and translated into <a href="/facts/English_language/tpkxGt7b">English</a> in the late 1950s by <a href="/facts/John_Stewart_Bell/vsrqUAX3">John Stewart Bell</a>, together with John Bradbury Sykes, M. J. Kearsley, and W. H. Reid. The last two volumes were written in the early 1980s. Vladimir Berestetskii [ru] and <a href="/facts/Lev_Pitaevskii/SGTqltEf">Lev Pitaevskii</a> also contributed to the series. The series is often referred to as "Landau and Lifshitz", "Landafshitz" (Russian: "Ландафшиц"), or "Lanlifshitz" (Russian: "Ланлифшиц") in informal settings.

Course of Theoretical Physics open-in-new

Course of Theoretical Physics