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Comment by mavelikara | Hacker News Reader

Not just fiction, but Russian technical books were also memorable from my childhood in India. Many here would remember their struggles with I.E.Irodov's Problems in General Physics [1] as much as stories of Chuk and Gek [2], or Misha.

[1]: https://archive.org/details/IrodovProblemsInGeneralPhysics

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuk_and_Gek

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I'm studying for the JEE and Yes! Irodov is a beautiful book. That, along with Krotov, tells me Russia must have had an excellent program, with their Physics books from the above, their Chemistry books from Landau, and their Math Circles.

Lev Landau was a Physicist. And I really liked his book on Quantum Mechanics.

Landau's books[0] are very famous among advanced undergrads and grad students of Physics in India.

Landau also measured the genius of his contemporaries[1]. He gave himself a 1.5, and 1 to Schrodinger, Satyen Bose, etc. Eisnstein was 0.5. (Lower the better)

He also won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_Theoretical_Physics

[1]: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/landau-genius-scale-...

A low cost Indian publisher named "Arihant Publications" has published Irodov's (and others) books under "Classic Texts Series"; all available on Amazon India.

Irodov is one of that must have book for competitive exam but very hard

Irodov has a reputation for being difficult. I remember that if someone could solve a problem from that book, they would be considered especially bright.

However I also remember trying the book and after some failed starts really getting into it and it became one of my favorite books. I believe the difficulty was because the book was purely problems, there was almost no context of theory. But the problems were very well designed and solving them was a joy.

For sure there were countless jokes by Soviet students at the expense of his last name (for king Herod's).

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