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Recollections of Lev Davidovich Landau

JUN 01, 1994
Landau’s students and collaborators adored the great theorist. But his irreverence and nasty temper made enough powerful enemies to land him in the Gulag for a year.
Alexander I. Akhiezer

The older I get, the more I am afflicted by fits of nostalgia. Even when they recall the best days of my youth, they nonetheless weigh heavy, because it’s impossible to go back. I think the best way to deal with these memories is to convey them to paper. So I’d like to share some of my recollections of a great man, my unforgettable teacher Lev Davidovich Landau, to whom I was close for several decades until his tragic death in 1968. (See also the articles by I. M. Khalatnikov and Vitaly Ginzburg in PHYSICS TODAY, May 1989.)

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Alexander I. Akhiezer, Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, Kharkov, Ukraine.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 47, Number 6

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