Selected Works of Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, Volume I: Chemical Physics and Hydrodynamics

Selected Works of Ya. B. Zeldovich is a two-volume collection of over 100 articles spanning half a century of work by the late Soviet scientist Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich. The breadth and depth of Zeldovich’s work is staggering. Author of over twenty books and more than 500 scientific articles, he made fundamental contributions in chemical catalysis and kinetics, combustion and the hydrodynamics of explosive phenomena, nuclear chain reactions and nuclear energy, the physics of elementary particles, and the large-scale structure of the universe and cosmology. The importance of this collection lies not only in its documentary value as a collection of key scientific works by a man whose genius was characterized by the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov as “probably unique.” Zeldovich himself considered his most valuable role to be that of a teacher, to convey to young scientists the how of science. The author of several excellent textbooks on topics ranging from elementary mathematics to advanced methods of mathematical physics, he saw this collection of works, enlarged from the original Russian edition, as a contribution to that end. Here one can see the scientific method at work—and all the enthusiasm, the breakthroughs, and the mistakes associated with real scientific endeavor. Commentaries by the author and the editors are included with each paper serving to enhance both the historical and the pedagogical value of this edition.

Originally published in 1992.

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