Under the Spell of Landau When Theoretical Physics was Shaping Destinities

This invaluable collection of memoirs and reviews on scientific activities of the most prominent theoretical physicists belonging to the Landau School - Landau, Migdal, Zeldovich, Smorodinsky, Ter-Martirosyan, Kirzhnits, Gribov, Larkin and Anselm - are being published in English for the first time.

The main goal is to acquaint readers with the life and work of outstanding Soviet physicists who, to a large extent, shaped theoretical physics in the 1950s–70s. Many intriguing details have remained unknown beyond the “Iron Curtain” which was dismantled only with the fall of the USSR.

Mikhail Shifman is the Ida Cohen Fine Professor of Physics at the University of Minnesota.