It’s a strange feeling reading Ioffe’s memoir.

When I was a physics undergraduate, I understood the mentality. The high-maintenance asshole professor was exactly who I’d be drawn towards. I learned how unhealthy that was, and many of those who didn’t ended up burning out HARD.

Landau was the rare asshole whose ability to hone students was worth the abuse. And reading this, I found myself in the frame of mind of “yeah, in that scenario, I’d absolutely work my ass off just to be in that guy’s favour”.

Years training myself out of that unhealthy mentality and boom, a few pages of memoir and I’m back in that naive frame of mind.