Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa(1894-1984) - Russian physicist and engineer, member of the Royal Society of London (1929), academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1974). Proceedings on the physics of magnetic phenomena, physics and technology of low temperatures, quantum physics of the condensed state, electronics and plasma physics.
In 1922-1924 Kapitsa developed a pulsed method for creating superstrong magnetic fields. In 1934 he invented and built a machine for the adiabatic cooling of helium. In 1937 he discovered the superfluidity of liquid helium. In 1939 he gave a new method of liquefying air using a low pressure cycle and a high efficiency turboexpander. Nobel Prize (1978). USSR State Prize (1941, 1943). Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1959). Medals of Faraday (England, 1943), Franklin (USA, 1944), Niels Bohr (Denmark, 1965), Rutherford (England, 1966), Kamerling-Onnes (Netherlands, 1968).
Life is like a card game that you play without knowing the rules.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
Family and years of study
Peter's father is Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa, a military engineer and builder of the forts of the Kronstadt fortress. Mother, Olga Ieronimovna - philologist, specialist in children's literature and folklore. Her father, Infantry General Ieronim Ivanovich Stebnitsky, is a military surveyor and cartographer.
In 1912, Pyotr Kapitsa, after graduating from a real school in Kronstadt, entered the electromechanical faculty of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute (PPI). Already in the first courses, the physicist Abram Fedorovich Ioffe, who taught physics at the Polytechnic, drew attention to him. He attracts Kapitsa to research in his laboratory. In 1914, Kapitsa went on a summer vacation to Scotland to study English. Here he was caught by the First World War. He manages to return to Petrograd only in November 1914. In 1915, Peter voluntarily went to the Western Front as an ambulance driver as part of the sanitary detachment of the Union of Cities (January - May).
In 1916, Petre Kapitsa married Nadezhda Kirillovna Chernosvitova. Her father, K.K. Chernosvitov, a member of the Central Committee of the Kadet Party, a deputy from the First to the Fourth State Dumas, was arrested by the Cheka and shot in 1919. In the winter of 1919-1920, during a flu epidemic (“Spanish flu”), Kapitsa loses his father, son, wife and newborn daughter within a month. In 1927, Peter married Anna Alekseevna Krylova, the daughter of a mechanic and shipbuilder, academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov, in a second marriage.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
First scientific work
Peter Kapitsa published his first works in 1916, being a 3rd year student at PPI. After defending his thesis in September 1919, he received the title of electrical engineer. But even in the fall of 1918, at the invitation of A.F. Ioffe, he became an employee of the Physico-Technical Department of the X-ray and Radiological Institute (reformed in November 1921 into the Physico-Technical Institute).
In 1920, Kapitsa, together with the scientist Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov, proposed a method for determining the magnetic moment of an atom, based on the interaction of an atomic beam with an inhomogeneous magnetic field. This method was then carried out in the well-known experiments of Stern-Gerlach.
At the Cavendish Laboratory
On May 22, 1921, Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa arrives in England as a member of the commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, sent to the countries of Western Europe to restore scientific ties broken by war and revolution. On July 22, he began working at the Cavendish Laboratory, whose head, Rutherford, agreed to accept him for a short-term internship. The experimental skill and engineering acumen of the young Russian physicist make such a strong impression on Rutherford that he seeks a special subsidy for his work.
Criticism, of course, is capable of ruining any thought.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
From January 1925, Kapitsa was deputy director of the Cavendish Laboratory for magnetic research. In 1929 he was elected a full member of the Royal Society of London. In November 1930, the Council of the Royal Society, from the funds bequeathed to the Society by the chemist and industrialist L. Mond, allocates £15,000 for the construction of a laboratory for Kapitsa in Cambridge. The inauguration of the Mondo Laboratory took place on February 3, 1933.
During 13 years of successful work in England, Pyotr Kapitsa remained a loyal citizen of the USSR and did everything possible to help the development of science in his country. Thanks to his assistance and influence, many young Soviet physicists had the opportunity to work for a long time at the Cavendish Laboratory. In the International Series of Monographs in Physics, Oxford University Press, one of the founders and chief editors of which was Kapitsa, monographs by theoretical physicists Georgy Antonovich Gamov and Yakov Ilyich Frenkel, Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov are published. But all this did not prevent the authorities of the USSR in the autumn of 1934, when Kapitsa came to his homeland to see his relatives and give a series of lectures about his work, to cancel his return visa. He was summoned to the Kremlin and told that from now on he would have to work in the USSR.
The main sign of talent is when a person knows what he wants.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
Back to USSR
In December 1934, the Politburo adopted a resolution on the construction of the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. P. Kapitsa agrees to continue his research in the field of physics in Moscow only on the condition that his institute receive the scientific installations and instruments he created in England. Otherwise, he will be forced to change the field of his research and take up biophysics (the problem of muscle contractions), in which he has long been interested. He turns to the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, and he agrees to give him a place in his institute. In August 1935, the Politburo again considers the issue of Kapitsa at its meeting and allocates £30,000 to purchase equipment from his Cambridge laboratory. In December 1935, this equipment began to arrive in Moscow.
famous workshop
In 1937, Kapitsa's physics seminar began to work at the IFP - "kapichnik", as physicists began to call it, when it turns from an institute seminar into a Moscow and even all-Union one.
My beliefs fully follow the provisions of the Bible and differ from it only in one thing: the Bible says that God created man, but I am sure that the opposite is true.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
Defense work
During the war, Kapitsa was working on the introduction into industrial production of the oxygen plants he developed. At his suggestion, on May 8, 1943, by a decree of the State Defense Committee, the Main Directorate for Oxygen under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was created, and Pyotr Kapitsa was appointed head of the Chief Oxygen.
Conflict with the authorities
On August 20, 1945, a Special Committee was created under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, which was entrusted with the leadership of work on the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb. Kapitsa is a member of this committee. However, work in the Special Committee weighs on him. In particular, because we are talking about the creation of "weapons of destruction and murder" (words from his letter to Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev). Taking advantage of the conflict with Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, who headed the atomic project, Kapitsa asks to be released from this work. As a result - many years of disgrace. In August 1946, he was expelled from Glavkislorod and from the institute he had created.
Nikolina Gora
At his dacha, on Nikolina Gora, Pyotr Kapitsa equips a small home laboratory in the gatehouse. In this "hut-laboratory", as he called it, Kapitsa conducts research in mechanics and hydrodynamics, and then turns to high-power electronics and plasma physics.
Leading means not interfering with good people's work.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
When in 1947 the Faculty of Physics and Technology was created at Moscow State University, one of the founders and organizers of which was Kapitsa, he became the head of the department of general physics at the Faculty of Physics and Technology, and in September he began to read a course of lectures. (In 1951, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology was established on the basis of this faculty). At the end of December 1949, P. Kapitsa evaded participation in the ceremonial meetings dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Stalin, which was perceived by the authorities as a demonstrative step, and he was immediately released from work at Moscow State University.
Return to work at the Academy
After the death of Stalin and the arrest of Beria, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR adopted a resolution "On measures to help academician P. L. Kapitsa in his work." On the basis of the Nikologorsk home laboratory, the Physical Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences was created, and Kapitsa was appointed its head.
On January 28, 1955, Kapitsa again became director of the Institute for Physical Problems (since 1990, this institute has been named after him). On June 3, 1955, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the country's leading physics journal, the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. Since 1956, Kapitsa has been the head of the Department of Physics and Low Temperature Engineering at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1957-1984 he was a member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
A person is young when he is not afraid to do stupid things.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
World recognition of Peter Kapitsa
In 1929, Kapitsa was elected a full member of the Royal Society of London and a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1939 - an academician. In 1941 and 1943 he was awarded the State Prize, in 1945 he received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, in 1974 he was awarded the second gold medal "Hammer and Sickle". In 1978 he received the Nobel Prize "for fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low temperature physics."
The contribution of a physicist to science and technology
Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa made a significant contribution to the development of the physics of magnetic phenomena, physics and technology of low temperatures, quantum physics of condensed matter, electronics and plasma physics. In 1922, he first placed a cloud chamber in a strong magnetic field and observed the curvature of the trajectories of alpha particles ((a-particle is the nucleus of a helium atom containing 2 protons and 2 neutrons). This work preceded Kapitsa's extensive cycle of research on methods for creating superstrong magnetic fields and studies of the behavior of metals in them.In these works, a pulsed method for creating a magnetic field by closing a powerful alternator was developed for the first time and a number of fundamental results in the field of metal physics (linear increase in resistance in large fields, saturation of resistance) were obtained. and durations for decades have been record-breaking.
Do not grieve and do not grieve, there are no such difficult situations from which life would not find a way out - you just need to give it time for this.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
The need to conduct research on the physics of metals at low temperatures led P. Kapitza to create new methods for obtaining low temperatures. In 1934 he invented the liquefier for the adiabatic cooling of helium. This method of cooling helium now underlies all modern technology for obtaining low temperatures near absolute zero - helium temperatures. At the same time, the application of the adiabatic cooling method to air led to the development by Kapitsa in 1936-1938 of a new method of liquefying air using a low-pressure cycle and a highly efficient turbo-expander invented by him. Low-pressure air separation plants are now operating all over the world, producing more than 150 million tons of oxygen per year. The Kapitsa turbo expander with an efficiency of 86–92% is used not only in them, but also in many other cryogenic systems.
In 1937, after a series of subtle experiments, Peter Kapitsa discovered the superfluidity of helium. He showed that the viscosity of liquid helium flowing through thin slots at a temperature below 2.19 K is so many times less than the viscosity of any very low-viscosity liquid that it is apparently equal to zero. Therefore, Kapitsa called this state of helium superfluid. This discovery marked the beginning of the development of a completely new direction in physics - the physics of condensed matter. To explain it, new quantum concepts had to be introduced - the so-called elementary excitations, or quasiparticles.
Freedom of creativity - freedom to make mistakes.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
Kapitsa's research in applied electrodynamics, which he began in the late 1940s. on Nikolina Gora, led to the invention of new devices for generating microwave oscillations of high constant power. These generators - nigotrons - were then used to create high-temperature high-pressure plasma.
The appearance of a scientist and a person
In Kapitsa, from a young age, a physicist, an engineer and a master of "golden hands" existed in one person. This is how he conquered Rutherford in his first year at Cambridge. His teacher A.F. Ioffe, in his submission to Kapitsa for election as a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was later signed by other scientists, wrote in 1929: “Peter Leonidovich Kapitsa combines a brilliant experimenter, an excellent theorist and a brilliant engineer, - one of the brightest figures in modern physics."
Fearlessness is one of the most characteristic features of Kapitza, a scientist and citizen. After the Soviet authorities did not allow him to return to Cambridge in the fall of 1934, he realized that in the totalitarian state in which he would work, everything was decided by the country's top leadership. With this leadership, he began to conduct a direct and frank conversation. And here he followed the behest of the equally fearless Ivan Pavlov, who in December 1934 told him: “After all, I am the only one here who says what I think, but I will die, you must do this, because this is so necessary for our homeland” (from a letter Kapitsa to his wife dated December 4, 1934).
The media are no less dangerous than the means of mass destruction.
Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
From 1934 to 1983, Petra Kapitsa wrote more than 300 letters "to the Kremlin." Of these, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin - 50, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov - 71, Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov - 63, Nikita Khrushchev - 26. Thanks to his intervention, theoretical physicists Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fok, Lev Davidovich were saved from death in prisons and camps during the years of Stalinist terror Landau and Ivan Vasilyevich Obreimov. In the last years of his life, he came out in defense of the physicist Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov and Yu. F. Orlov.
Kapitsa was a remarkable organizer of science. The success of his organizational activity was based on a simple principle, which he formulated and wrote down on a separate sheet of paper: "To lead means not to interfere with good people's work."
Even in the darkest times of Soviet isolationism, Kapitsa always defended the principles of internationalism in science. From his letter to Molotov dated May 7, 1935: “I firmly believe in the international nature of science and believe that real science should be beyond all political passions and struggles, no matter how much they try to involve it there. And I believe that the scientific work that I have been doing all my life is the property of all mankind, wherever I do it.
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa - quotes
In science, as in history, a certain stage of development requires its own genius. A certain period of development requires people of the appropriate mindset. 
At the heart of creative work is always a feeling of protest.
In physics, as in any science, there are a number of basic problems, the solution of which marks, as it were, milestones, the path along which scientific thought develops. Few scientists manage to set more than one such milestone. Rutherford, like Faraday, set several of them.
Money must turn around. The faster you spend, the more you get.
If the academician is still remembered 10 years after his death, he is a classic of science.
physicist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Founder and director of the IPP of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1945, he was a member of the Special Committee and the Technical Council of the Special Committee of the PSU under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1974). Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1978), twice winner of the State Prize of the USSR (1941, 1943).
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born on June 26 (July 9), 1894 in the port and naval fortress of Kronstadt into a noble family. His father - Leonid Kapitsa - a military engineer, major general of the Russian army, his mother - a teacher, researcher of Russian folklore.
In 1905 he entered the gymnasium. A year later, due to poor performance in Latin, he transferred to the Kronstadt real school. In 1914 P.L. Kapitsa entered the electromechanical faculty of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. There, an outstanding physicist became his supervisor, who noted the student's ability in physics and played an outstanding role in his development as a scientist. In 1916, the first scientific works of P.L. Kapitsa "Inertia of electrons in ampere molecular currents" and "Preparation of Wollaston filaments". At the beginning of 1915, P.L. Kapitsa spent several months at the front of the First World War, and, working as an ambulance driver, drove the wounded on the Polish front.
Due to the turbulent revolutionary events, P.L. Kapitsa graduated from the Polytechnic Institute only in 1919. From 1918 to 1921 - teacher at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, at the same time worked as a researcher at the Department of Physics of this institute. In 1919-1920. from the epidemic of the "Spanish flu" killed the father and wife of Kapitsa, a son at the age of 1.5 years and a newborn daughter three days old. In the same 1920, P.L. Kapitsa and the future world-famous physicist and Nobel laureate propose a method for determining the magnetic moment of an atom, based on the interaction of an atomic beam with an inhomogeneous magnetic field. This scientific work of Kapitza became the first notable experience in the field of atomic physics.
He believed that a promising young physicist needed to continue his studies at an authoritative foreign scientific school, but for a long time it was not possible to organize a trip abroad. Thanks to the intervention of Maxim Gorky in 1921, Kapitsa, as part of a special commission, was sent on a scientific mission to England. Kapitsa secured an internship at the Cavendish Laboratory of the great physicist Ernst Rutherford in Cambridge. At first, the relationship between Rutherford and Kapitsa was not easy, but gradually the Soviet physicist managed to win his trust, and they soon became very close friends. The studies he carried out in this laboratory in the field of magnetic fields brought P.L. Kapitsa world fame. In 1923 he became a doctor of Cambridge University, in 1925 - assistant director for magnetic research at the Cavendish Laboratory, in 1926 - director of the Magnetic Laboratory he created as part of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1928, he discovered the law of a linear, in magnitude magnetic field, increase in the electrical resistance of metals (Kapitsa's law).
For these and other scientific achievements in 1929, P.L. Kapitsa was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and in the same year a full member of the Royal Society of London. In April 1934, for the first time in the world, he received liquid helium at a plant he had created. This discovery gave a powerful impetus to research in low temperature physics.
Until 1934, P.L. Kapitsa and his family lived in England and regularly came to the USSR to rest and see relatives. The government of the USSR several times offered him to stay in his homeland, but the scientist invariably refused. In 1934, during one of his visits to the USSR for teaching and consulting work, P.L. Kapitsa was detained in the USSR (he was denied permission to leave). The reason was the fear of the Soviet leadership that he would remain abroad, and the desire to continue his scientific work in the USSR. Kapitsa was initially categorically against this decision, since he had an excellent scientific base in England and wanted to continue his research there. In 1934, the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences was established by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and Kapitsa was temporarily appointed its first director (in 1935 he was approved in this position at a session of the USSR Academy of Sciences). He was asked to create a powerful scientific center in the USSR, for which, with the assistance of the Soviet government, he was supplied with all the equipment of his laboratory from England.
In his letters of the late 1930s, P.L. Kapitsa admitted that the opportunities for work in the USSR were inferior to those that were abroad - this is even despite the fact that he received a scientific institution at his disposal and practically had no problems with financing. It was depressing that problems that were solved in England with a single phone call were mired in bureaucracy. The sharp statements of the scientist and the exceptional conditions created for him by the authorities did not contribute to the establishment of mutual understanding with colleagues in the academic environment.
From 1936 to 1938 P.L. Kapitza developed a method of liquefying air using a low pressure cycle and a high efficiency turboexpander, which predetermined the development worldwide of modern large air separation plants for the production of oxygen, nitrogen and inert gases. In 1940, he made a new fundamental scientific discovery - the superfluidity of liquid helium (during the transfer of heat from a solid body to liquid helium, a temperature jump occurs at the interface, called the Kapitsa jump; the magnitude of this jump increases sharply with decreasing temperature).
In January 1939, P.L. Kapitsa was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
During the Great Patriotic War, together with the Institute of Physical Problems P.L. Kapitsa was evacuated to Kazan and returned to Moscow in August 1943. In 1941-1945. he was a member of the Scientific and Technical Council under the Commissioner of the USSR State Defense Committee. In 1942, P.L. Kapitsa developed an installation for the production of liquid oxygen, on the basis of which, in 1943, an experimental plant was put into operation at the Institute of Physical Problems.
In May 1943, by a decree of the USSR State Defense Committee, Academician P.L. Kapitsa was appointed head of the Main Directorate of the Oxygen Industry under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (Glavkislorod).
In January 1945, the plant for the production of liquid oxygen TK-2000 in Balashikha with a capacity of 40 tons of liquid oxygen per day (almost 20% of the entire production of liquid oxygen in the USSR) was put into operation.
For the successful scientific development of a new turbine method for producing oxygen and for the creation of a powerful turbo-oxygen plant for the production of liquid oxygen, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 30, 1945, Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.
Naturally, a world-famous physicist was one of the first to be involved in work on the USSR atomic project. August 20, 1945 I.V. Stalin signs the Decree on the creation of a body for managing work on uranium - a Special Committee under the State Defense Committee of the USSR. By the same decree, a Technical Council of 10 people was created under the Special Committee, which included P.L. Kapitsa. In the Technical Council, he headed the commission for the production of heavy water.
On November 13, 1945, the Technical Council of the Special Committee heard the question: “V. On the organization of research work on the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes (assignment of the Special Committee). At the meeting, it was decided: to instruct TT. Kapitsa P.L. (convocation), Kurchatov I.V., Pervukhin M.G. within a month, prepare and submit proposals for consideration by the Council on the organization (volume, program and participants) of research work on the use of intra-atomic energy for peaceful purposes ... ". (For a number of reasons, this order was not fulfilled. According to a certificate on the progress of the implementation of the orders of the Customs Union, P.L. Kapitsa had to make proposals on the use of production waste for peaceful purposes).
However, on November 25, 1945, P.L. Kapitsa sends a letter to I.V. Stalin on the organization of work on the problem of the atomic bomb and with a request for his release from work in the Special Committee and the Technical Council.
“Comrade Stalin, for almost four months I have been sitting and actively participating in the work of the Special Committee and the Technical Council on the Atomic Bomb (A.B.).
In this letter, I decided to report to you in detail my thoughts on the organization of this work with us and also ask you once again to release me from participating in it.
In the organization of work according to A.B., it seems to me that there is much that is abnormal. In any case, what is being done now is not the shortest and cheapest way to create it.
The task before us is this: America, having spent 2 billion dollars, in 3-4 years made AB, which is now the most powerful weapon of war and destruction. If we use the reserves of thorium and uranium known to us so far, then they would be enough to destroy everything on the dry surface of the globe 5-7 times in a row.
But it is foolish and absurd to think that the main possibility of using atomic energy will be its destructive power. Its role in culture will undoubtedly be no less than oil, coal and other sources of energy, moreover, its energy reserves in the earth's crust are greater and it has the unusual advantage that the same energy is concentrated in ten million times less weight than in ordinary combustible. A gram of uranium or thorium is equivalent to about 10 tons of coal. A gram of uranium is a piece of half a silver dime, and 10 tons is a load of coal from almost an entire platform.
Secret A.B. unknown to us. The secret to key issues is very carefully guarded and is the most important state secret of America alone. While the information received is not sufficient to create AB, it is often given to us, no doubt in order to lead us astray.
To implement A.B., the Americans spent 2 billion dollars, which is approximately 30 billion rubles for our industrial products. Almost all of this must be spent on construction and engineering. During the reconstruction and in 2-3 years, we are unlikely to raise this. So we cannot quickly follow the American path, and if we do, we will fall behind anyway...
Life has shown that I could force myself to obey only as Kapitsa, head of the head office at the Council of People's Commissars, and not as Kapitsa, a world-famous scientist. Our cultural upbringing is still not enough to place Kapitza the scientist higher than Kapitza the boss. Even a comrade like Beria does not understand this. This is what happens now when solving the problem of A.B. The opinions of scientists are often taken with skepticism and done in their own way behind their backs.
The Special Committee must teach the comrades to trust the scientists, and the scientists, in turn, this will make them feel more responsible, but this is not yet the case.
This can only be done if the scientists and the comrades of the Special Committee are equally responsible. And this is possible only when the position of science and the scientist will be accepted by everyone as the main force, and not an auxiliary one, as it is now ...
Comrades Beria, Malenkov, Voznesensky behave in the Special Committee like supermen. In particular Comrade. Beria...
I would like Comrade Beria got acquainted with this letter, because this is not a denunciation, but useful criticism. I would have told him everything myself, but it would be very troublesome to see him.”
I.V. Stalin decided to withdraw P.L. Kapitsa from the committee, but this conflict with L.P. Beria cost the scientist dearly: in 1946 he was removed from the post of head of the Glavkisloroda under the Council of Ministers of the USSR and from the post of director of the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The only consolation was that he was not arrested.
Since Kapitsa was deprived of access to secret developments, and almost all the leading scientific and research institutions of the USSR were involved in work on the creation of atomic weapons, he was left without work for some time. In order not to sit idle, P.L. Kapitsa created a home laboratory at a dacha outside Moscow, where he worked on problems of mechanics, hydrodynamics, high-power electronics, and plasma physics.
In 1941-1949. he became a professor and head of the department of general physics at the Faculty of Physics and Technology of Moscow State University, but in January 1950, for his defiant refusal to attend the celebrations in honor of the 70th anniversary of I.V. Stalin was fired from there. In the summer of 1950, P.L. Kapitsa was enrolled as a senior researcher at the Institute of Crystallography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, while he continued research in his laboratory.
In the summer of 1953, after his arrest, Kapitsa reported on his personal developments and the results obtained to the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was decided to continue research and in August 1953 P.L. Kapitsa was appointed director of the Physical Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was created at the same time. In 1955, he was reappointed director of the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences (he headed it until the end of his life), as well as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. In these positions, the academician worked until the end of his life.
At the same time, since 1956, P.L. Kapitsa headed the Department of Physics and Technology at Low Temperatures and was Chairman of the Coordinating Council of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Supervised fundamental work in the field of low-temperature physics, strong magnetic fields, high-power electronics, and plasma physics. The author of fundamental scientific works on this topic, published many times in the USSR and many countries of the world.
For outstanding achievements in the field of physics, many years of scientific and teaching activity, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 8, 1974, Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was awarded the second gold medal "Hammer and Sickle" with the Order of Lenin.
In recent years, P.L. Kapitsa became interested in a controlled thermonuclear reaction. In 1978, Academician Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low temperature physics." The news of the award was received by the academician during his vacation at the Barvikha sanatorium. Kapitsa, contrary to tradition, devoted his Nobel speech not to those works that were awarded the prize, but to modern research. Kapitsa referred to the fact that he moved away from questions in the field of low-temperature physics about 30 years ago and is now carried away by other ideas. The Nobel speech of the laureate was called "Plasma and controlled thermonuclear reaction".
In difficult periods in the history of the Motherland, P.L. Kapitsa always showed civic courage and adherence to principles. So, during the period of mass repressions of the late 1930s, he achieved his release under the personal guarantee of future academicians and world-famous scientists V.A. Fock and . In the 1950s, he actively opposed the anti-scientific activities of T.D. Lysenko, having come into conflict with N.S. Khrushchev. In the 1970s, P.L. Kapitsa refused to sign a letter condemning the academician, at the same time he also spoke with calls to take measures to improve the safety of nuclear power plants (10 years before the Chernobyl accident).
P.L. Kapitsa is the winner of two Stalin Prizes of the 1st degree (1941 - for the development of a turboexpander for obtaining low temperatures and its use for air liquefaction, 1943 - for the discovery and study of the phenomenon of superfluidity of liquid helium). Big Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR named after M.V. Lomonosov (1959).
The scientist received worldwide recognition during his lifetime, being elected a member of many academies and scientific societies. In particular, he was elected a member of the International Academy of Astronautics (1964), the International Academy of the History of Science (1971), a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1946), the Polish Academy of Sciences (1962), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( 1966), Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (1969), Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Yugoslavia, 1971), Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1980), British Physical Society (1932), member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston (USA, 1968), the US Physical Society (1937), etc. P.L. Kapitsa is an honorary doctor of 10 universities, a full member of 6 scientific institutes.
P.L. Kapitsa was awarded six Orders of Lenin (1943, 1944, 1945, 1964, 1971, 1974), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1954), medals, the Order of the Partisan Star (Yugoslavia , 1964).
P.L. Kapitsa died on April 8, 1984. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
P.L. Kapitsa has a bronze bust in the Soviet park of Kronstadt. In the same place, in Kronstadt, on the facade of the building of school No. 425 on Uritsky Street, house No. 7/1, a memorial plaque made of red granite was installed, on which is carved: “Pyotr Leonidovich studied in this building, a former real school, in 1907-1912 Kapitsa, an outstanding Soviet physicist, academician, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, Nobel Prize laureate. Memorial plaques are also installed in St. Petersburg on the building of the Polytechnic University and in Moscow on the building of the Institute for Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he worked. The Russian Academy of Sciences established the P.L. Kapitsa (1994).
Literature
Kapitsa, Tamm, Semenov: in essays and letters.
M.: Vagrius, Priroda, 1998. - 575 p., ill.
TO Apica Petr Leonidovich - an outstanding physicist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (AS USSR), director of the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Born on June 26 (July 9), 1894 in the port and naval fortress of Kronstadt on the island of Kotlin in the Gulf of Finland, now - the city of Kronstadt district of St. Petersburg. Russian. From the nobility, the son of a military engineer, staff captain, future major general of the Russian Imperial Army L.P. Kapitza (1864-1919) and teacher, researcher of Russian folklore.
In 1912 he graduated from the Kronstadt real school and entered the electromechanical faculty of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. There, his supervisor was the outstanding physicist A.F. Ioffe, who noted Kapitsa's abilities in physics and played an outstanding role in his development as a scientist. In 1916, the first scientific works of P. L. Kapitsa "Inertia of electrons in ampere molecular currents" and "Preparation of Wollaston filaments" were published in the "Journal of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society". In January 1915, he was mobilized into the army and spent several months on the Western Front of the First World War, being the driver of an ambulance.
Due to the turbulent revolutionary events, he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute only in 1919. From 1918 to 1921 - a teacher at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, at the same time worked as a researcher in the department of physics of this institute. In 1918-1921 he was also an employee of the Physics and Technology Department of the State X-ray and Radiological Institute. In 1919-1920, Kapitsa's father and wife, a son aged 1.5 years and a newborn daughter three days old, died from the Spanish flu epidemic. In the same 1920, P. L. Kapitsa and the future world-famous physicist and Nobel laureate N. N. Semenov proposed a method for determining the magnetic moment of an atom, based on the interaction of an atomic beam with an inhomogeneous magnetic field. This is Kapitsa's first major work in the field of atomic physics.
In May 1921 he was sent on a scientific mission to England with a group of Russian scientists. Kapitsa secured an internship at the Cavendish Laboratory of the great physicist Ernst Rutherford in Cambridge. The researches in the field of magnetic fields made by him in this laboratory brought P. L. Kapitsa world fame. In 1923 he became a doctor of the University of Cambridge, in 1925 - assistant director for magnetic research at the Cavendish Laboratory, in 1926 - director of the Magnetic Laboratory he created as part of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1928, he discovered the law of a linear, in magnitude magnetic field, increase in the electrical resistance of metals (Kapitsa's law).
For this and other achievements in 1929 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in the same year he was elected a full member of the Royal Society of London. In April 1934, for the first time in the world, he received liquid helium at a facility he created. This discovery gave a powerful impetus to research in low temperature physics.
In the same year, during one of his frequent visits to the USSR for teaching and consulting work, P. L. Kapitsa was detained in the USSR (he was denied permission to leave). The reason was the desire of the Soviet leadership to continue his scientific work at home. Kapitsa was initially against this decision, since he had an excellent scientific base in England and wanted to continue his research there. However, in 1934, the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences was established by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and Kapitsa was temporarily appointed its first director (in 1935 he was approved in this position at a session of the USSR Academy of Sciences). He was invited to create a powerful scientific center in the USSR himself, and with the assistance of the Soviet government, all the equipment of his laboratory was delivered from Cavendish.
From 1936 to 1938, Kapitza developed a method of liquefying air using a low pressure cycle and a high efficiency turboexpander, which predetermined the development of modern large air separation plants worldwide for the production of oxygen, nitrogen and inert gases. In 1940, he made a new fundamental discovery - the superfluidity of liquid helium (during the transition of heat from a solid body to liquid helium, a temperature jump occurs at the interface, called the Kapitsa jump; the magnitude of this jump increases very sharply with decreasing temperature). In January 1939 he was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
During the Great Patriotic War, together with the Institute of Physical Problems, he was evacuated to the capital of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the city of Kazan (returned to Moscow in August 1943). In 1941-1945 he was a member of the Scientific and Technical Council under the Commissioner of the USSR State Defense Committee. In 1942, he developed an installation for the production of liquid oxygen, on the basis of which, in 1943, an experimental plant was put into operation at the Institute of Physical Problems.
In May 1943, by a decree of the USSR State Defense Committee, Academician P.L. Kapitsa was appointed head of the Main Directorate of the Oxygen Industry under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (Glavkislorod).
In January 1945, the plant for the production of liquid oxygen TK-2000 in Balashikha with a capacity of 40 tons of liquid oxygen per day (almost 20% of the entire production of liquid oxygen in the USSR) was put into operation.
W and for the successful scientific development of a new turbine method for producing oxygen and for the creation of a powerful turbo-oxygen plant for the production of liquid oxygen by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 30, 1945 Kapitsa Petr Leonidovich was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.
Naturally, a world-famous physicist was recruited to work on the USSR atomic project. So, when in August 1945 Special Committee No. 1 was created under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR to manage all work on the use of intra-atomic uranium energy, Kapitsa was included in its composition. But he immediately came into conflict with the head of the committee - the all-powerful L.P. Beria, and already at the end of 1945, at his request, I.V. Stalin decided to withdraw P.L. Kapitsa from the committee. This conflict cost the scientist dearly: in 1946 he was removed from the post of head of the Glavkisloroda under the Council of Ministers of the USSR and from the post of director of the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The only consolation was that he was not arrested.
Since Kapitsa was deprived of access to secret developments, and all scientific and research institutions of the USSR were involved in work on the creation of atomic weapons, he did not have a job for some time. He created a home laboratory at a dacha near Moscow, where he studied the problems of mechanics, hydrodynamics, high-power electronics and plasma physics. In 1941-1949 he was a professor and head of the department of general physics at the Faculty of Physics and Technology of Moscow State University. But in January 1950, for a defiant refusal to attend solemn events in honor of the 70th anniversary of I.V. Stalin was fired from there. In the summer of 1950, he was enrolled as a senior researcher at the Institute of Crystallography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, continuing research in his laboratory.
In the summer of 1953, after the arrest of L.P. Beria, Kapitsa reported on his personal developments and the results obtained at the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was decided to continue research and in August 1953 P.L. Kapitsa was appointed director of the Physical Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was created at the same time. In 1955, he was reappointed director of the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences (he headed it until the end of his life), as well as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. In these positions, the academician worked until the end of his life.
At the same time, since 1956, he headed the Department of Physics and Technology of Low Temperatures and was the chairman of the Coordinating Council of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Supervised fundamental work in the field of low-temperature physics, strong magnetic fields, high-power electronics, and plasma physics. The author of fundamental scientific works on this topic, published many times in the USSR and many countries of the world.
W and outstanding achievements in the field of physics, many years of scientific and teaching activity by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 8, 1974 Kapitsa Petr Leonidovich He was awarded the second gold medal "Hammer and Sickle" with the award of the Order of Lenin.
For fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low temperature physics in 1978, Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
In difficult periods in the history of the Motherland, P. L. Kapitsa always showed civic courage and adherence to principles. So, during the period of mass repressions of the late 1930s, he achieved his release under the personal guarantee of future academicians and world-famous scientists V.A. Fock and L.D. Landau. In the 1950s, he actively opposed the anti-scientific policies of T.D. Lysenko, having come into conflict with N.S. Khrushchev. In the 1970s, he refused to sign a letter condemning Academician A.D. Sakharov, at the same time he also called for measures to improve the safety of nuclear power plants (10 years before the Chernobyl accident).
Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1929. Member of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1957-1984). Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1928). Professor (1939).
Winner of two Stalin Prizes of the 1st degree (1941 - for the development of a turboexpander for obtaining low temperatures and its use for air liquefaction, 1943 - for the discovery and study of the phenomenon of superfluidity of liquid helium). Big Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR named after M.V. Lomonosov (1959).
The great scientist received worldwide recognition during his lifetime, being elected a member of many academies and scientific societies. In particular, he was elected a member of the International Academy of Astronautics (1964), the International Academy of the History of Science (1971), a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1946), the Polish Academy of Sciences (1962), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1966), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences ( 1969), Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Yugoslavia, 1971), Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1980), full member of the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina" (GDR, 1958), Physical Society of Great Britain (1932), member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston (USA, 1968), honorary member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Denmark (1946), New York Academy of Sciences (USA, 1946), Royal Irish Academy of Sciences (1948), Academy of Sciences in Allahabad, India (1948), member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society ( Great Britain, 1923), the Royal Society of London (Great Britain, 1929), the Physical Society of France (1935), the Physical Society of the USA (1937).
Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Algiers (1944), University of Paris (France, Sorbonne, 1945), University of Oslo (Norway, 1946), Charles (Prague) University (Czechoslovakia, 1964), Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland, 1964), Dresden Technical University (GDR, 1964), University of Delhi (India, 1966), Columbia University (USA, 1969), Wroclaw University. B. Bierut (Poland, 1972), University of Turku (Finland, 1977).
Full member of Trinity College, Cambridge University (Great Britain, 1925), Institute of Physics of Great Britain (1934), member of the Institute for Fundamental Research. D. Tata (India, 1977). Honorary member of the Institute of Metals of Great Britain (1943), the B. Franklin Institute (USA, 1944), the National Institute of Sciences of India (1957).
Awarded with prestigious scientific awards, including the Faraday Medal (USA, 1943), the Franklin Medal (USA, 1944), the Niels Bohr Medal (Denmark, 1965), the Rutherford Medal (Great Britain, 1966), the Kamerling-Onnes Medal (Netherlands, 1968) .
He was awarded six Orders of Lenin (04/30/1943, 07/09/1944, 04/30/1945, 07/09/1964, 07/20/1971, 07/08/1974), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (03/27/1954), medals, a foreign award - the Order "Partisan Star" (Yugoslavia, 1964).
Lived in the hero city of Moscow. Died April 8, 1984. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (plot 10).
The great scientist, twice Hero of Socialist Labor P.L. A bronze bust was erected to Kapitsa in the Soviet park of Kronstadt (1979). In the same place, in Kronstadt, on the facade of the building of school No. 425 (the former real school) along Uritsky Street, a memorial plaque was installed. Memorial plaques are also installed in St. Petersburg on the building of the Polytechnic University at the address: Politekhnicheskaya street, house No. 29 and in Moscow on the building of the Institute of Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he worked. The Russian Academy of Sciences established the P.L. Kapitsa (1994).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
in a collage
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, 1964.
Kapitsa (left) and Semyonov (right). In the autumn of 1921, Kapitsa appeared in the studio of Boris Kustodiev and asked him why he painted portraits of celebrities and why the artist should not paint those who would become famous. The young scientists paid the artist for the portrait with a sack of millet and a rooster.
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (June 26, 1894, Kronstadt - April 8, 1984, Moscow) - Soviet physicist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939).
Prominent organizer of science. Founder of the Institute for Physical Problems (IFP), whose director he remained until the last days of his life. One of the founders of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The first head of the Department of Low Temperature Physics of the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1978) for the discovery of the phenomenon of superfluidity of liquid helium, he introduced the term "superfluidity" into scientific use. He is also known for his work in the field of low temperature physics, the study of superstrong magnetic fields and the confinement of high-temperature plasma. Developed a high-performance industrial plant for gas liquefaction (turbo expander). From 1921 to 1934 he worked at Cambridge under Rutherford. In 1934, during a guest visit, he was forcibly left in the USSR. In 1945 he was a member of the Special Committee on the Soviet atomic project, but his two-year plan for the implementation of the atomic project was not approved, in connection with which he asked for his resignation, the request was granted. From 1946 to 1955 he was dismissed from state Soviet institutions, but he was left the opportunity to work as a professor at Moscow State University until 1950. Lomonosov.
Twice winner of the Stalin Prize (1941, 1943). He was awarded a large gold medal named after M. V. Lomonosov of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1959). Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1974). Member of the Royal Society of London (Fellow of the Royal Society).
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born in Kronstadt, in the family of military engineer Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa and his wife Olga Ieronimovna, daughter of topographer Ieronim Stebnitsky. In 1905 he entered the gymnasium. A year later, due to poor academic performance in Latin, he transferred to the Kronstadt real school. After graduating from college, in 1914 he entered the electromechanical faculty of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. A capable student is quickly noticed by A.F. Ioffe, attracted to his seminar and work in the laboratory. The First World War found the young man in Scotland, which he visited during his summer vacation to learn the language. He returned to Russia in November 1914, and a year later he volunteered for the front. Kapitsa served as a driver in an ambulance and drove the wounded on the Polish front. In 1916, having been demobilized, he returned to St. Petersburg to continue his studies.
Even before defending his diploma, A.F. Ioffe invites Pyotr Kapitsa to work in the Physical and Technical Department of the newly created X-ray and Radiological Institute (transformed in November 1921 into the Physical-Technical Institute). The scientist publishes his first scientific work in ZhRFHO and begins teaching.
Ioffe believed that a promising young physicist needed to continue his studies at a reputable foreign scientific school, but it took a long time to organize a trip abroad. Thanks to the assistance of Krylov and the intervention of Maxim Gorky, in 1921 Kapitsa, as part of a special commission, was sent to England.
Thanks to Ioffe's recommendation, he manages to get a job at the Cavendish Laboratory under the supervision of Ernest Rutherford, and from July 22 Kapitsa begins to work in Cambridge. The young Soviet scientist quickly earns the respect of his colleagues and management thanks to his talent as an engineer and experimenter. Works in the field of superstrong magnetic fields bring him wide popularity in scientific circles. At first, the relationship between Rutherford and Kapitsa was not easy, but gradually the Soviet physicist managed to win his trust, and they soon became very close friends. Kapitsa gave Rutherford the famous nickname "crocodile". Already in 1921, when the famous experimenter Robert Wood visited the Cavendish Laboratory, Rutherford instructed Peter Kapitza to conduct a spectacular demonstration experiment in front of the famous guest.
The topic of his doctoral dissertation, which Kapitsa defended at Cambridge in 1922, was "The passage of alpha particles through matter and methods for producing magnetic fields." From January 1925, Kapitsa was deputy director of the Cavendish Laboratory for magnetic research. In 1929, Kapitsa was elected a full member of the Royal Society of London. In November 1930, the Council of the Royal Society decides to allocate £15,000 for the construction of a special laboratory for Kapitza in Cambridge. The inauguration of the Mond Laboratory (named after the industrialist and philanthropist Mond) took place on February 3, 1933. Kapitsa is elected Messel Professor of the Royal Society. The leader of the Conservative Party of England, former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, in his speech at the opening, noted:
We are happy that Professor Kapitsa, who so brilliantly combines both a physicist and an engineer, is working for us as the director of the laboratory. We are convinced that under his able leadership the new laboratory will contribute to the knowledge of the processes of nature.-
Kapitsa maintains ties with the USSR and promotes international scientific exchange of experience in every possible way. The International Series of Monographs in Physics, Oxford University Press, one of the editors of which was Kapitsa, publishes monographs by Georgy Gamow, Yakov Frenkel, and Nikolai Semyonov. Julius Khariton and Kirill Sinelnikov come to England at his invitation for an internship.
Back in 1922, Fyodor Shcherbatsky spoke about the possibility of electing Peter Kapitsa to the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1929, a number of leading scientists signed a nomination for election to the USSR Academy of Sciences. On February 22, 1929, Oldenburg, permanent secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences, informed Kapitsa that “the Academy of Sciences, wishing to express its deep respect for your scientific merits in the field of physical sciences, elected you at the General Meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences on February 13 this year. to its corresponding members”.
Return to the USSR
The 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks appreciated the significant contribution of scientists and specialists to the success of the industrialization of the country and the implementation of the first five-year plan. However, at the same time, the rules for the departure of specialists abroad became more stringent and a special commission now monitored their implementation.
Numerous cases of non-return of Soviet scientists did not go unnoticed. In 1936, V. N. Ipatiev and A. E. Chichibabin were deprived of Soviet citizenship and expelled from the Academy of Sciences because they remained abroad after a business trip. A similar story with young scientists G. A. Gamov and F. G. Dobzhansky had a wide resonance in scientific circles.
Kapitsa's activities in Cambridge did not go unnoticed. Of particular concern to the authorities was the fact that Kapitsa provided advice to European industrialists. According to historian Vladimir Esakov, long before 1934, a plan was developed related to Kapitsa, and Stalin knew about it. From August to October 1934, a number of Politburo resolutions were adopted, signed by Kaganovich, ordering the detention of the scientist in the USSR. The final resolution read:
Proceeding from the considerations that Kapitsa provides significant services to the British, informing them about the situation in the science of the USSR, as well as the fact that he provides British firms, including the military, with the largest services, selling them his patents and working on their orders, to prohibit P L. Kapitsa departure from the USSR.
Until 1934, Kapitsa and his family lived in England and regularly came to the USSR to rest and see relatives. The government of the USSR several times offered him to stay in his homeland, but the scientist invariably refused. At the end of August, Pyotr Leonidovich, as in previous years, was going to visit his mother and take part in an international congress dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dmitry Mendeleev.
After arriving in Leningrad on September 21, 1934, Kapitsa was summoned to Moscow, to the Council of People's Commissars, where he met with Pyatakov. The Deputy People's Commissar for Heavy Industry recommended that the proposal to remain be carefully considered. Kapitsa refused, and he was sent to a higher authority to Mezhlauk.
The chairman of the State Planning Commission informed the scientist that it was impossible to travel abroad and the visa had been cancelled. Kapitsa was forced to move in with his mother, and his wife, Anna Alekseevna, went to Cambridge to live with her children alone. The English press, commenting on what happened, wrote that Professor Kapitsa was forcibly detained in the USSR.
Pyotr Leonidovich was deeply disappointed. At first, I even wanted to leave physics and switch to biophysics, becoming Pavlov's assistant. Appealed for help and intervention to Paul Langevin, Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford. In a letter to Rutherford, he wrote that he had barely recovered from the shock of what had happened, and thanked the teacher for helping his family, who remained in England. Rutherford, in a letter to the plenipotentiary of the USSR in England, asked for clarification - why the famous physicist was denied a return to Cambridge. In a response letter, he was informed that Kapitsa's return to the USSR was dictated by the accelerated development of Soviet science and industry planned in the five-year plan.
1934-1941
The first months in the USSR were difficult - there was no work and certainty with the future. I had to live in the cramped conditions of a communal apartment with the mother of Peter Leonidovich. His friends Nikolai Semyonov, Alexei Bakh, Fedor Shcherbatskoy helped him a lot at that moment. Gradually, Pyotr Leonidovich came to his senses and agreed to continue working in his specialty. As a condition, he demanded that the Mondo laboratory, where he worked, be moved to the USSR. If Rutherford refuses to transfer or sell the equipment, duplicates of the unique instruments will need to be purchased. By decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 30 thousand pounds were allocated for the purchase of equipment.
On December 23, 1934, Vyacheslav Molotov signed a resolution on the organization of the Institute of Physical Problems (IPP) within the USSR Academy of Sciences. On January 3, 1935, the newspapers Pravda and Izvestiya announced the appointment of Kapitsa as director of the new institute. At the beginning of 1935, Kapitsa moved from Leningrad to Moscow - to the Metropol Hotel, and received a personal car at his disposal. In May 1935, the construction of the institute's laboratory building on Sparrow Hills began. After rather difficult negotiations with Rutherford and Cockcroft (Kapitsa did not take part in them), an agreement was reached on the conditions for transferring the laboratory to the USSR. Between 1935 and 1937 equipment was gradually received from England. The case was greatly stalled due to the sluggishness of the officials involved in the supply, and it took to write letters to the top leadership of the USSR, up to Stalin. As a result, we managed to get everything that Pyotr Leonidovich demanded. Two experienced engineers arrived in Moscow to help with installation and adjustment - mechanic Pearson and laboratory assistant Lauerman.
In his letters of the late 1930s, Kapitsa admitted that the opportunities for work in the USSR were inferior to those that were abroad - this is even despite the fact that he received a scientific institution at his disposal and practically had no problems with financing. It was depressing that problems that were solved in England with a single phone call were mired in bureaucracy. The sharp statements of the scientist and the exceptional conditions created for him by the authorities did not contribute to the establishment of mutual understanding with colleagues in the academic environment.
The situation is oppressive. Interest in my work fell, and on the other hand, fellow scientists became so indignant that attempts were made, at least in words, to put my work in conditions that simply had to be considered normal, that they are outraged without hesitation: “If<бы>they did the same to us, then we won’t do the same as Kapitsa ”... In addition to envy, suspicion and everything else, the atmosphere was created impossible and downright creepy ... Local scientists definitely have an unfriendly attitude towards my moving here.-
In 1935, Kapitsa's candidacy was not even considered for elections to full members of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He repeatedly writes notes and letters about the possibilities of reforming Soviet science and the academic system to government officials, but does not receive a clear response. Several times Kapitsa took part in meetings of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, but, as he himself recalled, after two or three times he "eliminated". In organizing the work of the Institute for Physical Problems, Kapitsa did not receive any serious help and relied mainly on his own strength.
In January 1936, Anna Alekseevna returned from England with her children, and the Kapitsa family moved to a cottage built on the territory of the institute. By March 1937, the construction of a new institute was completed, most of the instruments were transported and installed, and Kapitsa returned to active scientific work. At the same time, at the Institute of Physical Problems, a “kapichnik” began to work - the famous seminar of Pyotr Leonidovich, which soon gained all-Union fame.
In January 1938, Kapitsa published an article in the journal Nature about a fundamental discovery - the phenomenon of superfluidity of liquid helium and continued research in a new direction in physics. At the same time, the staff of the institute, headed by Petr Leonidovich, is actively working on a purely practical task of improving the design of a new installation for the production of liquid air and oxygen - a turboexpander. The fundamentally new approach of the academician to the functioning of cryogenic installations causes heated discussions both in the USSR and abroad. However, Kapitsa's activities are approved, and the institute he heads is held up as an example of the effective organization of the scientific process. At the general meeting of the Department of Mathematical and Natural Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences on January 24, 1939, by unanimous vote, Kapitsa was accepted as a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.)
