Who will modernize?

Expert comments

Do you have some kind of personal attitude to the Landsberg textbook, is it worth it to send it to the landing dump, or is it really good and it should be modernized?

Leonid Ponomarev , doctor physical. Sciences, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head. Laboratory of Theoretical Studies of the Institute of General and Nuclear Physics of the Kurchatov Institute, Laureate of the Enlightener Prize of 2009

To be honest, I don’t remember what textbooks I studied. I know, of course, that in my time the Landsberg course was in hearing, but I don’t know how the current generation will perceive it. Of course, there are long-lived textbooks, especially in mathematics (it is enough to recall Kiselev’s algebra), however, five volumes of Sivukhin, Feynman lectures on physics, the same Orir, and also Cooper, textbooks for US Colleges, etc. have appeared.

Of course, the Landsberg course was one of the first, but there was also Frish and Kitaygorod, so students' preferences were largely dependent on teachers, and not on the quality of textbooks. I think that even now the Landsberg course will have its own audience, especially if there is an enthusiast that can “modernize” it.

Mikhail Feigelman, Doctor Fiz.-Mat. sciences, deputy. Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. L.D. Landau, Professor MFTi

I believe that the written by V. Svishchenko is quite reasonable. I just don’t know who would now be able to fulfill the program for updating examples proposed by him. Maybe there is such a person. If only it did not work out that some kind of boobs of considerations that are not related to science will do this.

Andrey Linde , Professor of the Faculty of Physics of Stanford University (USA), winner of the 2012 Fundamental Physics Prize

At school, I loved Landsberg very much, because I lacked an ordinary textbook. But here, in the USA, we use other textbooks, also very good and modern. Without Landsberg in his hands, it is difficult to compare and think about modernization.

Eugene Polzik , professor of the Institute of Niels Bora, Director of the Danish Center for Quantum Optics, Academician of the Royal Academy of Sciences Denmark, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Russian Quantum Center

I do not remember the Landsberg textbook on general physics very well. But I recall his optics textbook, which used when he was a student. I think that the biggest impact on me as a physicist had: “The Course of Theoretical Physics Landau and Lifshits” and “Feynman lectures in physics” edited by R. Feynman, R. Leighton (Rb Leighton) and M. Sands (M. Sands).