Concept
The Course of Theoretical Physics is a ten-volume series of books covering theoretical physics that was initiated by Lev Landau and written in collaboration with his student Evgeny Lifshitz starting in the late 1930s. It is said that Landau composed much of the series in his head while in an NKVD 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 Russian and translated into English in the late 1950s by John Stewart Bell, together with John Bradbury Sykes, M. J. Kearsley, and W. H. Reid. The last two volumes were written in the early 1980s. Vladimir Berestetskii and Lev Pitaevskii 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. The presentation of material is advanced and typically considered suitable for graduate-level study. Despite this specialized character, it is estimated that a million volumes of the Course were sold by 2005. The series has been called "renowned" in Science and "celebrated" in American Scientist. A note in Mathematical Reviews states, "The usefulness and the success of this course have been proved by the great number of successive editions in Russian, English, French, German and other languages." At a centenary celebration of Landau's career, it was observed that the Course had shown "unprecedented longevity." In 1962, Landau and Lifshitz were awarded the Lenin Prize for their work on the Course. This was the first occasion on which the Lenin Prize had been awarded for the teaching of physics. The following list does not include reprints and revised editions. Volume 1 covers classical mechanics without special or general relativity, in the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms.
