1，This story happened at the session of the Academy of Sciences of the (former) USSR. The notorious agronomist Lysenko (founder of "creative Darwinism") gave a talk on the inheritance of acquired traits. When his report was over, the famous physicist Landau asked:
- So, you argue that if we will cut off the ear of a cow, and the ear of its offspring, and so on, sooner or later the earless cows will start to be born?
- Yes, that's right.
- Then, how you explain that the virgins still being born?
2，In the Physical Technical Institute in Kharkov where Landau was working some time, there was one vain and mediocre but prolific physicist who made his research mostly by the method of plagiarism. One day he received a telegram which said that he is nominated for Nobel prize and therefore he should prepare a corpus of all his papers in the typewritten form in two copies (btw, it was before the computers) and submit them to the head of Department of Theoretical Physics (which Landau was) with deadline of 1st April. The poor man lost his head and did not pay attention to the dubious date. He began to feel very important and stopped to say "good-day" to his old friends. He accomplished the great task of typewriting the corpus in time and laid it on the Landau's table only to be met by the question: "Did you really believe that Nobel prize could be given for this trash?"
3，Laundau who treated everyone else as a fool, found his match in Pauli. After explaining his work to a sceptical Pauli, he angrily demanded whether Pauli thought his ideas were nonsense. "Not at all, not at all", came the reply. "Your ideas are so confused I cannot tell whether they are nonsense or not."
- So, you argue that if we will cut off the ear of a cow, and the ear of its offspring, and so on, sooner or later the earless cows will start to be born?
- Yes, that's right.
- Then, how you explain that the virgins still being born?
2，In the Physical Technical Institute in Kharkov where Landau was working some time, there was one vain and mediocre but prolific physicist who made his research mostly by the method of plagiarism. One day he received a telegram which said that he is nominated for Nobel prize and therefore he should prepare a corpus of all his papers in the typewritten form in two copies (btw, it was before the computers) and submit them to the head of Department of Theoretical Physics (which Landau was) with deadline of 1st April. The poor man lost his head and did not pay attention to the dubious date. He began to feel very important and stopped to say "good-day" to his old friends. He accomplished the great task of typewriting the corpus in time and laid it on the Landau's table only to be met by the question: "Did you really believe that Nobel prize could be given for this trash?"
3，Laundau who treated everyone else as a fool, found his match in Pauli. After explaining his work to a sceptical Pauli, he angrily demanded whether Pauli thought his ideas were nonsense. "Not at all, not at all", came the reply. "Your ideas are so confused I cannot tell whether they are nonsense or not."
