Kharkiv Theoretical Physics School

The Kharkiv Theoretical Physics School[http://www.univer.kharkov.ua/en/departments/physics/physics_about About the School > > Karazin University, School of Physics] was founded by Lev Landau in Kharkov, Soviet Union (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) and further developed by Oleksandr Akhiezer and Ilya Lifshitz,[https://ujp.bitp.kiev.ua/index.php/ujp/article/download/2018729/869/6211 More about the founders of the Kharkiv Theoretical Physics School] following

Landau's flight to the Kapitza’s Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow in 1937 in an attempt to avoid an arrest during the UPTI Affair.

It is sometimes referred to as the Landau school — more precisely, one might say that Landau's group at Kharkiv was the beginning of the Landau school. Lev Landau was the head of the Kharkhiv Theoretical Physics School from 1932 to 1937,[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1962/landau-bio.html Lev Landau, bio, Nobel Prize in Physics 1962]{{cite book | last=Dorozynski | first=Alexandre | title=The man they wouldn't let die | publisher=Macmillan | publication-place=New York | year=1965 | oclc=530629}} Note: Landau was the head of the Theoretical Division at the Institute for Physical Problems from 1937 until 1962 when, as a result of a car accident, he suffered injuries from which he never returned to science. His students at Moscow included Lev Pitaevskii, Alexei Abrikosov, Arkady Levanyuk, Lev Gor'kov, Isaak Khalatnikov, Boris L. Ioffe and Isaak Pomeranchuk. His students at Kharkiv included Oleksandr Akhiezer, Evgeny Lifshitz, Ilya Lifshitz, and Isaak Pomeranchuk. Upon the recommendation of Edward Teller, László Tisza joined, in January 1935, Landau's group at Kharkiv and then returned to Budapest in 1937.{{cite journal|author1=Friedman, Jerome|authorlink1=Jerome Isaac Friedman|author2=Greytak, Thomas J.|author3=Kleppner, Daniel|authorlink3=Daniel Kleppner|title=Obituary: Laszlo Tisza|journal=Physics Today|date=July 2009|volume=62|issue=7|page=65|url=http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/62/7/10.1063/1.3177236|doi=10.1063/1.3177236|bibcode = 2009PhT....62g..65F }}

Landau developed a comprehensive exam called the "Theoretical Minimum" which students were expected to pass before admission to the school. The exam covered all aspects of theoretical physics, and between 1934–1937 in Kharkiv and 1937–1961 in Moscow only 43 candidates passed.{{cite book|author=Blundell, Stephen J.|authorlink=Stephen Blundell|title=Superconductivity: A Very Short Introduction|year=2009|publisher=Oxford U. Press|page=67|isbn=978-0-19-157909-7|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GxUWMrm4dxsC&pg=PA67}}{{cite arXiv|author=Ioffe, Boris L.|title=Landau's Theoretical Minimum, Landau's Seminar, ITEP in the beginning of the 1950s|date=25 April 2002|eprint=hep-ph/0204295}} In this way his students became proper physicists, rather than narrow specialists.

In Kharkiv, he and his friend and former student, Evgeny Lifshitz, began writing the Course of Theoretical Physics, ten volumes that together span the whole of the subject and are still widely used as graduate-level physics texts.