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This note is a brief history of how the theory of Ginzburg and Landau came to be. Early publications on the macroscopic theory of superconductivity are reviewed in detail. Discussions that the two co-authors had with their colleagues and between themselves are described. The 1952 review by V L Ginzburg is discussed, in which a number of well-defined requirements on the yet-to-be-developed microscopic theory of superconductivity were formulated, constituting what J Bardeen called the 'Ginzburg energy gap model'.

The paper presents a historical review of theoretical concepts regarding the nature of the ferroelectric transition in crystals with a perovskite structure. We discuss Ginzburg's phenomenological theory, including the idea of the soft phonon mode as a reason for the ferroelectric transition. The role played by the dipole–dipole interaction in softening the optical phonon mode is considered in the framework of the theory of lattice dynamics. The experimental data and theoretical results are presented that prove that the ferroelectric transition in perovskite crystals is due to the soft mode and is a displacement-type transition.

On 4 October, 2007, the scientific session of the Division of Physical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences on room-temperature superconductivity was held at the conference hall of the Lebedev Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences. The following reports were made at this session: (1) Maksimov E G (Lebedev Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow) "Room-temperature superconductivity: myth or reality?"; (2) Božovic I (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA) "Experiments with atomically smooth thin films of cuprate superconductors: strong electron — phonon coupling and other surprises"; (3) Antipov E V, Abakumov A M (Moscow State University, Chemical Department, Moscow) "Structural design of superconductors based on complex copper oxides"; (4) Kopaev Yu V, Belyavskii V I, Kapaev V V (Lebedev Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow) "With cuprate luggage to room-temperature superconductivity." An abridged version of these reports is given below. •Room-temperature superconductivity: myth or reality?, E G Maksimov Physics-Uspekhi, 2008, Volume 51, Number 2, Pages 167–170 •Experiments with atomically smooth thin films of cuprate superconductors: strong electron—phonon coupling and other surprises, I Božovic Physics-Uspekhi, 2008, Volume 51, Number 2, Pages 170–180 •Structural design of superconductors based in complex copper oxides, E V Antipov and A M Abakumov Physics-Uspekhi, 2008, Volume 51, Number 2, Pages 180–190 •With cuprate luggage to room-temperature superconductivity, Yu V Kopaev, V I Belyavskii and V V Kapaev Physics-Uspekhi, 2008, Volume 51, Number 2, Pages 191–198

Experimental and theoretical high-pressure research on simple metals is reviewed. It is shown that simple metals undergo transition sequences from close-packed highly-symmetric to less-symmetric and often less closely packed structures as pressure is varied over a wide range. A number of theoretical perspectives concerning the nature of this behavior are reviewed with a focus on the electrophysical properties of lithium and calcium at high pressure. Static and shock-wave compression data on Li and Ca are presented.

First-principles calculations of the physical properties of ionic crystals are reviewed. Two markedly different approaches within the framework of the density functional theory are described. In one of them, the electron spectrum and wave functions are treated within the standard band picture based on the solution of Kohn–Sham equations. In the second approach, the total electron density of a crystal is represented as a superposition of the densities of individual ions. The problem of determining the electric polarization of a crystal is discussed for each approach. It is shown that it is the use of Bloch functions rather than the physics of the phenomenon that complicates the solution of this problem within the Kohn–Sham framework. The deformable and polarizable ion model is described in detail, and its application to calculating many properties of ionic crystals, including the lattice dynamics and structural stability of crystal phases, is discussed.

A special session of the Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk (UFN) Editorial Board (UFN's oral issue) celebrating the 90th anniversary of the journal and the 50th anniversary of its English version (first under the title Soviet Physics–Uspekhi and then under the current title Physics–Uspekhi) took place on November 19, 2008 in the conference hall of the P N Lebedev Physical Institute (FIAN) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The following reports were presented at the session: (1) Ginzburg V L (P N Lebedev Physical Institute, RAS, Moscow), Aksent'eva M S (Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, RAS, Moscow) "On the history of UFN (introductory talk)"; (2) Dremin I M (P N Lebedev Physical Institute, RAS, Moscow) "The physics of the Large Hadron Collider"; (3) Shirkov D V (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Moscow region) "Pair correlations and spontaneous symmetry breaking"; (4) Smirnov B M (Institute for High Temperatures, RAS, Moscow) "Modeling of gas-discharge plasma"; (5) Sadovskii M V (Institute of Electrophysics, RAS Ural Branch, Ekaterinburg) "High-temperature superconductivity in iron-based layered compounds"; (6) Aleksandrov E B (All-Russian Research Center, S I Vavilov State Optical Institute, St. Petersburg) Physical limits in the metrology of a magnetic field by atomic spectroscopy techniques"; (7) Maksimov E G (P N Lebedev Physical Institute, RAS, Moscow) "Microscopic studies of the nature of the ferroelectric transition"; (8) Fortov V E (Institute for High Energy Density, RAS, Moscow) "Extreme states of matter". Articles based on reports 1–4 and 6–8 are published below in this special issue of the Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk journal devoted to the jubilees of the Russian and English versions of the journal.

Experimental and theoretical research on nonadiabatic effects in metals is briefly reviewed. It is shown that these effects are most manifest in optical phonon spectra at small wave vectors q satisfying the condition qvF < ω0(q), where vF is the electron Fermi velocity, and ω0(q) is the phonon frequency. Various theoretical approaches to calculating nonadiabatic effects are examined. Frohlich's phenomenological field-theoretical model, the most widely used in such calculations, is discussed in detail, some aspects of its application are considered, and its efficiency as a tool for studying nonadiabatic effects is demonstrated.

Possible mechanisms of high-temperature superconductivity are briefly discussed. In particular, a recent paper by P W Anderson on this problem is criticized as containing a number of incorrect and unfounded statements. One of these — that the static dielectric function e(q,0) cannot be negative — is discussed in detail, as is its consequence, a strong limit on the transition temperature Tc. Proofs are given that e(q,0) not only can but indeed must be negative in many stable systems, including most of the conventional metals. Various types of electron–electron interaction in superconducting cuprates are discussed. The role of the electron–phonon interaction in cuprates is highlighted.