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\title{From the Editors}
%\author{}
%\address{}


\maketitle

The famous eight-volume course written by Landau and Lifshitz  between  the late 1940s and 
early 1960s presented a complete picture of the whole of theoretical physics as it was known at that time.
 It was a beautiful
picture and it appeared to have just a few loose ends. Today, making  such a comprehensive encyclopedia does
 not seem to be possible. Indeed it is easy to estimate that
high-energy theory alone, represented in the 
Landau--Lifshitz course just by one volume ``Quantum Electrodynamics", would probably require the
 whole eight volumes now: two volumes of ``String Theory" by Joe Polchinski, 
three volumes of ``The Quantum Theory of Fields" by Steven Weinberg,
one volume of electroweak phenomenology and another one on 
QCD phenomenology and strong interaction physics at large, plus, probably, yet another  on
 applications of field-theoretical methods in condensed matter  and related areas. Needless to 
say, such a Herculean task would require the effort of a large team of experts --- the time of
 great universalists, such as Landau or Fermi, seems to be over.

Our task was much less ambitious:
to create a snapshot of theoretical physics, a time slice
which would be sufficiently representative and give a (hopefully)
full picture of the topics and subjects  which excited  and inspired the
theoretical community at the beginning of the third millennium. 
We have done our best to make the Collection
 ``From Fields to Strings: Circumnavigating Theoretical Physics", 
which the reader now holds  in his or her hands,  as complete and
pedagogical as possible. The Collection contains
approximately 50 papers covering all areas of high-energy theory and selected
areas of condensed matter.  Approximately 70\% of the articles are
comprehensive dedicated reviews or semi-reviews. Other contributions  
present original results.

This Collection is dedicated to the memory of Ian Kogan,
an outstanding theoretical physicist who died in 2003 at the age of 44.
When in 2003 we embarked on this endeavor  -- 
making a Ian Kogan Memorial Volume -- we could not anticipate that
the response of the community would be so powerful. Leading theorists
and world experts in various areas of theoretical physics formed a team
which without exaggeration one can call remarkable. As a result, 
a single  volume grew into  three bulky ones, over 2300 pages altogether.  
Of course, it is not only 
the quantity that counts but, first and foremost, the quality of the material.
The Collection spans very diverse topics but every author has  made a special effort
to achieve  a high standard of presentation  in spite of the
rather compressed time framework they had at their disposal.                  

The first part of the Collection is nonscientific, it is a tribute to Ian the 
human being.\footnote{\,A remark concerning a rather confusing
situation with the spelling of Ian's name is in order. In Russian it is {\cyr Yan},
which allows two distinct  transliterations: Yan and Ian. While in the Soviet Union
he used the former; after moving to the West he switched to the latter. 
So, whether the author of a paper is Yan Kogan or Ian Kogan, it is one and the same person.}
The focus of this part is the emotionally charged memoir of Ilya Kogan, Ian's father;
entitled ``This is how it was ...", these recollections span 
six decades of the turbulent twentieth century,
and can be recommended even to those who are
not particularly interested in the physics part. The latter constitutes the book's  main weight, 
both in the literal and figurative senses of this word.
The concluding chapter presents a small selection of Ian's papers
intended to illustrate the depth and breadth of his interests.
This breadth is reflected in  the wide range of topics covered in this Collection.

This publication, which we hope will have  a lasting impact in the community, was made possible 
by the enthusiastic participation of a large group of theoretical physicists from whom
we also  received  much advice and  encouragement.
We would like to thank them all.  
We are also grateful to Ben Gripaios for proofreading a large number of manuscripts, Alexey Kobrinskii for assistance with typesetting and Bella Wheater for help with the English version of Ilya Kogan's memoir.
Special thanks go to Poline Tylevich for the graphic design.
We are grateful to Lakshmi Narayanan --- ``our editor" ---
for unlimited patience and invaluable assistance in the
preparation of this publication. 
%Special thanks go 
%Ben Gripaios for proofreading a large number of manuscripts, and
%Poline Tylevich
%for the graphic design. We are also grateful to Alexey Kobrinskii for
%assistance with typesetting.

\vspace{4mm}
%\noindent
\flushright
{Misha Shifman, Arkady Vainshtein, and John Wheater\\[3mm]
August 29, 2004%
}


%\vspace{3mm}
%\noindent
%August 29, 2004.

%\vspace{7mm}
%\newpage
%\begin{center}
%{\bf List of Contributors}
%\end{center}

%\vspace{7mm}

%Dmitri Antonov, 
%Nima Arkani-Hamed, 
%Adi Armoni,  
%Manuel Asorey,
%Jose Barbon, 
%Andrei Belitsky,
%Zurab Berezhiani, 
%Miraculous J. Bhaseen,
%Vladimir Braun,
%Alexandre Caldeira,
%Maxim Chernodub,
%Thomas Cohen, 
%Paolo Creminelli,
%Csaba Csaki,  
%Thibault Damour,  
%Maria Cristina Diamantini,  
%Michael Douglas,
%Gerald Dunne, 
%Gia Dvali, 
%Fabian Essler,   
%Michael Flohr,  
%Gregory Gabadadze,   
%David Garcia-Alvarez,
%Howard Georgi,
%Alexander Gorsky,
%Sergei Gukov,
%Victor Gurarie,   
%Boris Ioffe,
%Evgeny Ivanov,
%Shamit Kachru,  
%Dimitra Karabali,
%Vladimir Kazakov,
%Valentin Khoze,
%Igor Klebanov, 
%Robert Konik,  
%Gregory Korchemsky, 
%Ivan Kostov,
%Alex Kovner,  
%David Kutasov, 
%Jose Luis Lopez,
%Andrei Losev,
%Andreas Ludwig,
%Juan Maldacena, 
%Nelia Mann,
%Emil Martinec, 
%Andrei Marshakov,
%Nikolaos Mavromatos,
%Luca Mezincescu,
%Guilherme Milhano, 
%Gregory Moore,
%Velayudhan Nair,
%Nikita Nekrasov,
%Joe Polchinski,
%Alexander Polyakov,
%Dmitry Polyakov,  
%Eliezer Rabinovici,  
%Pierre Ramond,  
%Seif Ranjbar-Daemi, 
%Adam Ritz, 
%Graham Ross, 
%John Schwarz, 
%Nathan Seiberg,
%Gordon Semenoff,
%Ashoke Sen,  
%Misha Shifman,
%Eva Silverstein, 
%Andrei Smilga,  
%Andrew Strominger,
%Lenny Susskind,  
%Richard Szabo,
%Paul Townsend, 
%Arkady Tseytlin,  
%Alexei Tsvelik,
%Alexander Turbiner, 
%Cumrun Vafa,
%Gabriele Veneziano,
%John Wheater,
%Frank Wilczek,  
%Edward Witten.


\end{document}
