Circle of Landau: Physics of War and Peace. Gorobets B.S.

This book is the second in the trilogy “Landau Circle” (the first book is the life of a genius (M., URSS)); She continues the story of the academician L. D. Landau (1908-1968), the Nobel Prize laureate, the Lenin and three Stalinist awards. Against the background of the era of the confrontation of the USSR and the USA, it is told about the outstanding results obtained by the Landau group in 1944-1953. In the field of nuclear physics and physics of the explosion. There are three chapters in the book: “Nuclear”, “Scientific and Popular”, “Scientific and Pedagogical”, as well as applications. Based on the newly declassified documents (1999-2007), it is told about the Landau atomic project contribution to the USSR atomic project: about the Landau-Lifshitsy-Khalatnikov equations, the solution of which made it possible to give the Landau working formula for calculating the efficiency (fraction of burnout of nuclear explosives) in various structures of the atomic and atomic and atomic hydrogen bombs; about the principle and first calculation of the implosion of the nuclear charge according to Landau-Stanukovych; about other theoretical results of military significance. Further, it is popular about the 15 scientific achievements of Landau in the fundamental “peaceful” physics, without avoiding conflict moments and genius errors (according to literary sources). The history of the creation of the 10-volume course of the theoretical physics of the Landau-Lifshitsa is described in detail, a bibliography of volumes in Russian and 19 foreign languages ​​is given, it is described about little-known, including dramatic events when working on co-authors on the volumes of the course. The memoirs of the participants of the famous seminar Landau, as well as physicists who passed the exams of the Teorminimum Landau, are given. For a wide range of readers interested in the history of physics of the 20th century.