Is that not just selection bias? Makes sense that the most gifted students at the most prestigious school over a span of 30 years went on to have great careers.
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OP was questioning whether Landau’s method of identifying the most gifted students actually selected for successful physicists:
“It makes me wonder of the 43 students who passed, how many achieved significant breakthroughs or Nobel prizes?”
So yes, it is selection bias by definition, but the point is that the method of selection worked. Most other professors at the most prestigious schools in the world could only dream of advising anything close to Landau’s academic descendants.
To complete the analysis we should look at the achievements of those who failed the Theoretical Minimum.
Well how many Nobel prize winners did Feynmann bring up?