and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, celebrated his 80th birthday on 18 January 2013. Lev Petrovich Pitaevskii belongs to the constellation of brilliant theoretical physicists who were the crop of the famous school created by Lev Landau already in the 1930s. The very style of Landau's work and his universalism demanded the same from his pupils: erudition, a wide scope of outlook on physics, solid mathematical training, and the ability to tackle any problem in any interesting field of physics. L P Pitaevskii was one of Landau's ``youngest generation'' of pupils; his stardom as a brilliant scientist began to shine under the Teacher's direct influence. L P Pitaevskii's contribution to modern theoretical physics is enormous, living up to all expectations and demands thatLandauanticipated fromhis pupils. LPPitaevskii's range of interests covers a huge spectrum of physics problems: from his early work on liquid helium to fundamental problems of quantum statistics, from the physics of metals to quantum mechanics to plasma physics, from research in the physics of the ionosphere, and then again to the properties of quantum liquids at ultra-low temperatures. A great many of these results long ago found their way into textbooks and review papers. Before making an attempt to give at least a brief overview of the most significant stages of L P Pitaevskii's life in theoretical physics, we need to say a few words about the subject of this note. His biography is fairly typical of many of Landau's studentsof thepost-warSovietperiod.LPPitaevskii was born in Saratov. Having entered the University of Saratov, he became interested in physics and brilliantly passed the informal examinations of the famous ``Landau's theor-minimum''. In 1955, L D Landau invited him to postgraduate studies at the Institute for Physical Problems (now the P L Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ð IPP); his official supervisor was E M Lifshitz. After graduating from the post-graduate program, he worked for a couple of years at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, the Ionosphere, and Radio Wave Propagation of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1960 onwards, his life has been inextricably linked to the IPP. In 1976, L P Pitaevskii was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as corresponding member and then in 1990 as full member. Since early 1990s, L P Pitaevskii has spentmost of his time in the Italian city of Trento. Without breaking his links with the IPP, he has worked at the University of Trento and in the Trento-based National Center for the Study of Bose±Einstein Condensation organized at Trento and headed by S Stringari. With a high degree of simplification, L P Pitaevskii's scientific universe can be divided into the following segments: I. Superfluidity of helium (He and He); II. electromagnetic radiation in media (Van der Waals and Casimir±Polder forces); III. plasma physics; IV. quantum liquids and Bose± Einstein condensation of cold atoms. This list can be expanded by adding a number of papers of a mathematical nature, such as his contributions to the theory of solitons. I. (a) Among his early results, the paper on the termination point of the excitation spectrum in superfluid helium (Sov. Phys. JETP 9 830 (1959) [Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 36 1168 (1959)]) impresses especially with its beauty and originality. The behavior implied by the processes of decay of excitations is such that the spectrum of quasiparticles cannot be extended beyond a certain value of momentum. The problem was solved by QFT techniques without introducing any assumptions on the weakness of the interaction. I. (b) In his spectacular paper ``On the superfluidity of liquid He'' (Sov. Phys. JETP 1