Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa: biography, photos, quotes. Nobel laureates: Pyotr Kapitsa Kapitsa scientist physicist

Kapitsa Peter Leonidovich
Born: June 26 (July 8), 1894.
Died: April 8, 1984

Biography

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (1894-1984) - Soviet physicist.

Prominent organizer of science. Founder of the Institute for Physical Problems (IFP), whose director he remained until last days life. One of the founders of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. First Head of the Department of Physics low temperatures Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University.

Laureate Nobel Prize in Physics (1978) for the discovery of the phenomenon of superfluidity of liquid helium, 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 liquefying gases (turbo expander). From 1921 to 1934 he worked at Cambridge under Rutherford. In 1934, having returned for a while to the USSR, he was forcibly left in his homeland. 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 with 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). Active member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Member of the Royal Society of London (Fellow of the Royal Society).

Youth

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born on June 26 (July 8), 1894 in Kronstadt (now the administrative district of St. Petersburg), in the family of a military engineer of Moldavian (Bessarabian) origin Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa and his wife Olga Ieronimovna, daughter of topographer Ieronim Stebnitsky from Ukrainian Volyn noble family. In 1905 he entered the gymnasium. A year later, due to poor 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 A. F. Ioffe, attracts to his seminar and work in the laboratory.

First World War caught young man in Scotland, which he visited during his summer holidays to study 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. Kapitsa's father dies from a Spanish flu in revolutionary Petrograd, then his first wife, two-year-old son and newborn daughter died.

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 (reformed 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 Krylova 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 Kapitsa 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 Kapitsa 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 natural processes.

Kapitsa maintains ties with the USSR and promotes international scientific exchange of experience in every possible way. In the "International Series of Monographs in Physics" Oxford University Press, one of the editors of which was Kapitsa, monographs by Georgy Gamow, Yakov Frenkel, Nikolai Semyonov are published. At his invitation, he comes to England for an internship Julius Khariton and Kirill Sinelnikov.

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. February 22, 1929 Permanent Secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences Oldenburg informs 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 for remaining 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 L. M. Kaganovich, ordering the detention of the scientist in the USSR. The final resolution read:

Based on the considerations that Kapitsa renders 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. Had to live in cramped conditions communal apartment 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 began at Vorobyovy Gory. 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 we done, then we will not 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. Fundamentally new approach 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.

War and post-war years

During the war, the IFP was evacuated to Kazan, where the family of Pyotr Leonidovich moved from Leningrad. During the war years, the need for the production of liquid oxygen from air on an industrial scale increases dramatically (in particular, for the production of explosives). Kapitsa is working on the introduction into production of the oxygen cryogenic plant he developed. In 1942, the first copy of "Object No. 1" - the TK-200 turbo-oxygen unit with a capacity of up to 200 kg / h of liquid oxygen - was manufactured and put into operation in early 1943. In 1945, "Object No. 2" was commissioned - the TK-2000 installation with a capacity ten times greater.

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. In 1945, a special institute for oxygen engineering, VNIIKIMASH, was organized and a new magazine, Oxygen, began to be published. In 1945 he received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and the institute he headed was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

In addition to practical activities, Kapitsa also finds time for teaching. On October 1, 1943, Kapitsa was enrolled as head of the Department of Low Temperatures at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. In 1944, at the time of the change of the head of the department, he became the main author of the letter of 14 academicians, which drew the attention of the government to the situation at the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. As a result, not Anatoly Vlasov, but Vladimir Fok became the head of the department after Igor Tamm. After working in this position for a short time, Fock left this post two months later. Kapitsa signed the letter of four academicians to Molotov, the author of which was A.F. Ioffe. This letter initiated the resolution of the confrontation between the so-called "academic" and "university" physics.

Meanwhile, in the second half of 1945, immediately after the end of the war, the Soviet atomic project entered the active phase. On August 20, 1945, the Atomic Special Committee was created under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, headed by Lavrenty Beria. The committee initially included only two physicists:

Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of all works. Kapitsa, who was not a specialist in nuclear physics, was supposed to supervise certain areas (low-temperature technology for the separation of uranium isotopes). Both Kurchatov and Kapitsa are part of technical council special committee, additionally I. K. Kikoin, A. F. Ioffe, Yu. B. Khariton and V. G. Khlopin are invited there. Kapitsa immediately becomes dissatisfied with the methods of Beria's leadership, he speaks very impartially and sharply about the General Commissar of State Security - both personally and professionally. On October 3, 1945, Kapitsa wrote a letter to Stalin asking him to be relieved of his work in the Committee, but there was no answer. On November 25, Kapitsa wrote a second letter, more detailed (on 8 pages), and on December 21, 1945, Stalin allowed Kapitsa's resignation. Minutes No. 9 of November 30, 1945, “minutes of the meeting of the Special Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR”, were published, at which P. L. Kapitsa makes a report on the conclusions that he made based on the analysis of data on the consequences of the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and did not no instructions were given, a detailed analysis of the bombardment of these cities was entrusted to be made by a commission headed by A. I. Alikhanov.

Actually, in the second letter, Kapitsa described how, in his opinion, it was necessary to carry out the atomic project, defining in detail the action plan for two years. According to the biographers of the academician, Kapitsa at that time did not know that Kurchatov and Beria at that time already had data on the American atomic program received by Soviet intelligence. The plan proposed by Kapitsa, although it was fast enough in execution, was not fast enough for the current political situation around the development of the first Soviet atomic bomb. In the historical literature, it is often mentioned that Stalin handed over to Beria, who offered to arrest the independent and sharp-minded academician "I'll take it off for you, but don't touch it." Authoritative biographers of Pyotr Leonidovich do not confirm the historical accuracy of such words of Stalin, although it is known that Kapitsa allowed himself behavior that was completely exceptional for a Soviet scientist and citizen. According to historian Lauren Graham, Stalin valued directness and frankness in Kapitsa. Despite the severity of the problems raised by them, Kapitsa kept his messages to the Soviet leaders secret (the content of most of the letters was disclosed after his death) and did not widely promote his ideas.

At the same time, in 1945-1946, the controversy around the turboexpander and the industrial production of liquid oxygen again intensified. Kapitsa enters into a discussion with leading Soviet cryogenic engineers who do not recognize him as a specialist in this field. The State Commission recognizes the promise of Kapitsa's developments, but believes that the launch into an industrial series will be premature. Kapitza's installations are dismantled, and the project is frozen.

On August 17, 1946, Kapitsa was removed from the post of director of the IFP. He retires to the state dacha, to Nikolina Gora. Instead of Kapitsa, Aleksandrov was appointed director of the institute. According to Academician Feinberg, at that time Kapitsa was "in exile, under house arrest." The dacha was the property of Pyotr Leonidovich, but the property and furniture inside were mostly state-owned and were almost completely removed. In 1950, he was fired from the Faculty of Physics and Technology of Moscow State University, where he lectured.

In his memoirs, Pyotr Leonidovich wrote about the persecution by law enforcement agencies, direct surveillance initiated by Lavrenty Beria. Nevertheless, the academician does not leave scientific activity and continues research in the field of low temperature physics, separation of uranium and hydrogen isotopes, and improves knowledge in mathematics. Thanks to the assistance of the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Sergei Vavilov, it was possible to obtain a minimum set of laboratory equipment and mount it in the country. In numerous letters to Molotov and Malenkov, Kapitsa writes about experiments carried out in artisanal conditions and asks for the opportunity to return to normal work. In December 1949, Kapitsa, despite the invitation, ignored the solemn meeting at Moscow State University dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Stalin.

Last years

The situation changed only in 1953 after the death of Stalin and the arrest of Beria. On June 3, 1955, after a meeting with Khrushchev, Kapitsa returned to the post of director of the IFP. At the same time, 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 one of the organizers and the first head of the Department of Physics and Low Temperature Engineering at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1957-1984 - Member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Kapitsa continues active scientific and pedagogical activity. During this period, the attention of the scientist was attracted by the properties of plasma, the hydrodynamics of thin layers of liquid, and even the nature of ball lightning. He continues to lead his seminar, where the best physicists of the country were considered an honor to speak. "Kapichnik" became, in a way, a scientific club where not only physicists were invited, but also representatives of other sciences, cultural and art figures.

The persuasiveness of scientific foresight and the weight of P. L. Kapitsa's opinion sometimes manifested itself in unexpected areas. So, in August 1955, he influenced the decision to create the first artificial satellite of the Earth. Here is how the laureate of the Lenin Prize, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR, Ph.D. writes about this. n., prof. Anatoly Viktorovich Brykov:

At the end of August 1955, a meeting of the country's leading scientists in the field of rocket science was held at the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where, at the suggestion of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, a special body was established to organize scientific research using a series of artificial Earth satellites. This newly created body was headed by M. V. Keldysh. Mstislav Vsevolodovich acted very energetically. The next day, all members of the newly created body gathered at the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where M.K. Tikhonravov made a report on the proposed design of the satellite and its weight characteristics. At the same time, Mikhail Klavdievich was based on the developments of the simplest satellite of the first stage, since the work on the second stage had not yet been completed. After the report, Tikhonravov gave answers to numerous questions on the thermal regime of the satellite, power sources, the weight of scientific instruments, etc. Igor Marianovich Yatsunsky participated in the work of this meeting and spoke about the discussion of the report in the following way: companion, Mstislav Vsevolodovich was still not satisfied and could not make a decision on this issue. The tension was resolved by Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa. He formulated the results of the discussion approximately as follows: “This is a completely new matter, here we are only entering the realm of the unknown, and this always brings science fruits that cannot be foreseen in advance. But they will definitely be. An artificial satellite of the earth must be made! Everyone agreed with him, including Keldysh. The decision to create the first artificial Earth satellite was made.

In addition to achievements in science, Kapitsa proved himself as an administrator and organizer. Under his leadership, the Institute for Physical Problems became one of the most productive institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences and attracted many of the country's leading specialists. In 1964, the academician expressed the idea of ​​​​creating a popular scientific publication for young people. The first issue of the Kvant magazine was published in 1970. Kapitsa took part in the creation of the Academgorodok research center near Novosibirsk, and a new type of higher educational institution - the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. After a long controversy in the late 1940s, the gas liquefaction plants built by Kapitza found wide application in industry. The use of oxygen for oxygen blasting led to a revolution in the steel industry.

In 1965, for the first time after more than thirty years, Kapitsa received permission to leave Soviet Union to Denmark to receive the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal. There he visited scientific laboratories and delivered a lecture on high energy physics. In 1969, the scientist and his wife visited the United States for the first time.

AT last years 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 the controlled thermonuclear reaction" (Plasma and the controlled thermonuclear reaction). Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa recalled that his father completely kept the bonus for himself (put it in his name in one of the Swedish banks) and gave nothing to the state.

These observations led to the idea that ball lightning is also a phenomenon created by high-frequency oscillations that occur in thunderclouds after ordinary lightning. In this way, the energy needed to maintain the continuous glow of ball lightning was supplied. This hypothesis was published in 1955. A few years later we had the opportunity to resume these experiments. In March 1958, already in a spherical resonator filled with helium at atmospheric pressure, in the resonant mode with intense continuous oscillations of the Hox type, a free-floating oval gas discharge arose. This discharge was formed in the region of the maximum electric field and slowly moved in a circle coinciding with the line of force.

Until the last days of his life, Kapitsa retained his interest in scientific activity, continued to work in the laboratory and remained director of the Institute for Physical Problems.

On March 22, 1984, Pyotr Leonidovich felt unwell and was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a stroke. On April 8, without regaining consciousness, Kapitsa died. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Works 1920-1980

One of the first significant scientific works (together with Nikolai Semyonov, 1918) is devoted to measuring the magnetic moment of an atom in a non-uniform magnetic field, which was improved in 1922 in the so-called Stern-Gerlach experiment.

While working in Cambridge, Kapitsa came to grips with the study of superstrong magnetic fields and their influence on the trajectory of elementary particles. One of the first Kapitsa in 1923 placed a cloud chamber in a strong magnetic field and observed the curvature of the tracks of alpha particles. In 1924, he obtained a magnetic field with an induction of 32 Tesla in a volume of 2 cm3. In 1928, he formulated the law of linear increase in the electrical resistance of a number of metals from the magnetic field strength (Kapitza's law).

The creation of equipment for studying the effects associated with the influence of strong magnetic fields on the properties of matter, in particular on magnetic resistance, led Kapitsa to the problems of low temperature physics. To carry out the experiments, first of all, it was necessary to have a significant amount of liquefied gases. The methods that existed in the 1920s and 1930s were ineffective. Developing fundamentally new refrigeration machines and installations, in 1934 Kapitsa, using an original engineering approach, built a high-performance plant for liquefying gases. He managed to develop a process that eliminated the phase of compression and high air purification. Now it was not required to compress the air up to 200 atmospheres - five were enough. Due to this, it was possible to increase the efficiency from 0.65 to 0.85-0.90, and reduce the price of the installation by almost ten times. In the course of work on the improvement of the turbo expander, it was possible to overcome an interesting engineering problem of freezing of the lubricant of moving parts at low temperatures - liquid helium itself was used for lubrication. The scientist made a significant contribution not only to the development of an experimental sample, but also to bringing the technology to mass production.

In the post-war years, Kapitsa was attracted by high-power electronics. He developed the general theory of electronic devices of the magnetron type and created continuous magnetron generators. Kapitsa put forward a hypothesis about the nature of ball lightning. Experimentally discovered the formation of high-temperature plasma in a high-frequency discharge. Kapitsa expressed a number of original ideas, for example, the destruction of nuclear weapons in the air using powerful beams of electromagnetic waves. In recent years, he worked on the issues of thermonuclear fusion and the problem of confining high-temperature plasma in a magnetic field.

The Kapitsa pendulum is named after Kapitsa - a mechanical phenomenon that demonstrates stability out of equilibrium. Also known is the quantum mechanical Kapitsa-Dirac effect, which demonstrates the scattering of electrons in the field of a standing electromagnetic wave.

Discovery of superfluidity

Even Kamerling-Onnes, investigating the properties of liquid helium obtained for the first time, noted its unusually high thermal conductivity. Fluid with abnormal physical properties attracted the attention of scientists. Thanks to the Kapitza plant, which began operating in 1934, it was possible to obtain liquid helium in significant quantities. Kamerling-Onnes in the first experiments received about 60 cm3 of helium, while Kapitsa's first installation had a capacity of about 2 liters per hour. The events of 1934-1937 associated with exclusion from work in the Mondov laboratory and forced detention in the USSR greatly delayed the progress of research. Only in 1937 did Kapitsa restore laboratory equipment and return to the new institute to the previous developments in the field of low temperature physics. Meanwhile, at the former workplace of Kapitsa, at the invitation of Rutherford, young Canadian scientists John Allen and Austin Meisner began work in the same area. Kapitza's experimental setup for the production of liquid helium remained in the Mondov laboratory - Alain and Meizner worked with it. In November 1937 they obtained reliable experimental results on the change in the properties of helium.

Historians of science, talking about the events at the turn of 1937-1938, note that there are some controversial points in the competition between the priorities of Kapitsa and Allen and Jones. Pyotr Leonidovich formally sent materials to Nature before his foreign competitors - the editors received them on December 3, 1937, but were in no hurry to publish, waiting for verification. Knowing that the verification could be delayed, Kapitsa clarified in a letter that the proofs could be checked by John Cockcroft, director of the Mond laboratory. Cockcroft, having read the article, informed his employees, Allen and Jones, about it, urging them to publish it. Cockcroft, a close friend of Kapitsa, was surprised that Kapitsa only at the last moment let him know about the fundamental discovery. It is worth noting that back in June 1937, in a letter to Niels Bohr, Kapitsa reported that he had made significant progress in the study of liquid helium.

As a result, both articles were published in the same issue of Nature on January 8, 1938. They reported an abrupt change in the viscosity of helium at temperatures below 2.17 Kelvin. The complexity of the problem solved by the scientists was that the exact measurement of the magnitude of the viscosity of a liquid that freely flowed into a half-micron hole was not easy to assess. The resulting turbulence of the liquid introduced a significant error in the measurement. Scientists professed a different experimental approach. Allen and Meisner considered the behavior of helium-II in thin capillaries (the same technique was used by the discoverer of liquid helium Kamerling-Onnes). Kapitza studied the behavior of a liquid between two polished discs and estimated the resulting viscosity to be less than 10 −9 P. Kapitsa called the new phase state helium superfluidity. The Soviet scientist did not deny that the contribution to the discovery was largely joint. For example, in his lecture, Kapitsa emphasized that the unique phenomenon of helium-II spouting was first observed and described by Alain and Meizner.

These works were followed by a theoretical substantiation of the observed phenomenon. It was given in 1939-1941 by Lev Landau, Fritz London and Laszlo Tissa, who proposed the so-called two-fluid model. In 1938-1941, Kapitsa himself continued to study helium-II, in particular, confirming the speed of sound predicted by Landau in liquid helium. The study of liquid helium as a quantum liquid (Bose-Einstein condensate) has become an important direction in physics, which has given rise to a number of remarkable scientific papers. Lev Landau received the Nobel Prize in 1962 in recognition of his contribution to the construction of a theoretical model for the superfluidity of liquid helium.

Niels Bohr recommended the candidacy of Petr Leonidovich to the Nobel Committee three times: in 1948, 1956 and 1960. However, the prize was awarded only in 1978. The controversial situation with the priority of the discovery, according to many researchers of science, led the Nobel Committee to delay for many years the award of the prize to the Soviet physicist. Allen and Meisner were not awarded the prize, although the scientific community recognizes their important contribution to the discovery of the phenomenon.

civil position

Historians of science and those who knew Pyotr Leonidovich closely described him as a multifaceted and unique personality. He combined many qualities: the intuition and engineering instinct of an experimental physicist; pragmatism and business approach of the organizer of science; independence of judgment in dealing with authorities.

If it was necessary to resolve some organizational issues, Kapitsa preferred not to make a phone call, but to write a letter and clearly state the essence of the matter. This form of appeal required an equally clear written response. Kapitsa believed that it was more difficult to wrap up a case in a letter than in a telephone conversation. In defending his civic position, Kapitsa was consistent and persistent, writing about 300 messages to the top leaders of the USSR, touching on the most pressing topics. As Yuri Osipyan wrote, he knew how to intelligently combine destructive pathos with creative activity.

There are examples of how, in the difficult times of the 1930s, Kapitsa defended his colleagues who fell under the suspicion of law enforcement agencies. Academicians Fock and Landau owe Kapitsa's release. Landau was released from the NKVD prison under the personal guarantee of Pyotr Leonidovich. The formal pretext was the need for support from a theoretical physicist to substantiate the superfluidity model. Meanwhile, the accusations against Landau were extremely serious, since he openly opposed the authorities and really participated in the dissemination of materials critical of the dominant ideology.

In 1966, he signed a letter from 25 cultural and scientific figures Secretary General The Central Committee of the CPSU L. I. Brezhnev against the rehabilitation of Stalin. Kapitsa also defended the disgraced Andrei Sakharov. In 1968, at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Keldysh called on members of the academy to condemn Sakharov, and Kapitsa spoke in his defense, stating that one cannot speak out against a person if one could not first get acquainted with what he wrote. In 1978, when Keldysh once again offered Kapitsa to sign a collective letter, he remembered how the Prussian Academy of Sciences excluded Einstein from its membership and refused to sign the letter.

On February 8, 1956 (two weeks before the 20th Congress of the CPSU), Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky and Igor Tamm made a report on the problems of modern genetics at a meeting of Kapitsa's physics seminar. For the first time since 1948, an official scientific meeting was held on the problems of the disgraced science of genetics, which Lysenko's supporters tried to disrupt in the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences and in the Central Committee of the CPSU. Kapitsa entered into polemics with Lysenko, trying to offer him an improved method of experimental verification of the perfection of the square-nested tree planting method. In 1973, Kapitsa wrote to Andropov with a request to release the wife of the famous dissident Vadim Delaunay. Kapitsa took an active part in the Pugwash movement, advocating the use of science exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Even during the Stalinist purges, Kapitsa maintained a scientific exchange of experience, friendly relations and correspondence with foreign scientists. They came to Moscow, visited the Kapitsa Institute. So in 1937, the American physicist William Webster visited Kapitza's laboratory. Kapitza's friend Paul Dirac visited the USSR several times

Kapitsa always believed that the continuity of generations in science has great importance and the life of a scientist in a scientific environment acquires real meaning if he leaves his students. He strongly encouraged work with youth and education of personnel. So in the 1930s, when liquid helium was a rarity even in the best laboratories of the world, students of Moscow State University could get it in the IFP laboratory for experiments.

Under the conditions of a one-party system and a planned socialist economy, Kapitsa managed the institute as he himself considered necessary. Initially, as a "party deputy", he was appointed from above by Leopold Olbert. A year later, Kapitsa gets rid of him, choosing his own deputy - Olga Alekseevna Stetskaya. At one time, there was no head of the personnel department at the institute at all, and Pyotr Leonidovich himself was in charge of personnel issues. He very freely managed the institute's budget independently, regardless of the schemes imposed from above. It is known that Pyotr Leonidovich, seeing the disorder in the territory, ordered the dismissal of two of the three janitors of the institute and the remaining one to pay a triple salary. Only 15-20 researchers worked at the Institute for Physical Problems, and in total there were about two hundred people in it, while usually the staff of a specialized research institute of those times (for example, FIAN or Phystekh) consisted of several thousand employees. Kapitsa entered into polemics about the methods of conducting a socialist economy, speaking very freely about comparison with the capitalist world.

If we take the last two decades, it turns out that fundamentally new directions in world technology, which are based on new discoveries in physics, were all developed abroad and we adopted them after they had received undeniable recognition. I will list the main ones: short-wave technology (including radar), television, all types of jet engines in aviation, gas turbines, atomic energy, isotope separation, accelerators. But the most offensive thing is that the basic ideas of these fundamentally new directions in the development of technology often originated in our country earlier, but were not successfully developed. Since they did not find recognition and favorable conditions for themselves.
- from a letter from Kapitsa to Stalin

Family and personal life

Father - Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa (1864-1919), major general of the engineering corps, who built the Kronstadt forts, a graduate of the Nikolaev engineering academy, who came from the Moldavian gentry family of Kapits-Milevsky (belonged to the Polish coat of arms "Yastrzhembets").

Mother - Olga Ieronimovna Kapitsa (1866-1937), nee Stebnitskaya, teacher, specialist in children's literature and folklore. Her father Ieronim Ivanovich Stebnitsky(1832-1897) - cartographer, corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, was the chief cartographer and geodesist of the Caucasus, so she was born in Tiflis. Then from Tiflis she came to St. Petersburg and entered the Bestuzhev courses. She taught at the preschool department of the Pedagogical Institute. Herzen.

In 1916, Kapitsa married Nadezhda Chernosvitova. Her father, a member of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party, State Duma deputy Kirill Chernosvitov, was later shot in 1919. From the first marriage, Peter Leonidovich had children:

Jerome (June 22, 1917 - December 13, 1919, Petrograd)
Nadezhda (January 6, 1920 - January 8, 1920, Petrograd).

Sergei (February 14, 1928, Cambridge - August 14, 2012, Moscow)
Andrei (July 9, 1931, Cambridge - August 2, 2011, Moscow).

Died with his mother from a Spanish flu. All were buried in one grave, at the Smolensk Lutheran cemetery in St. Petersburg. Pyotr Leonidovich was very upset by the loss and, as he himself recalled, only his mother brought him back to life.

In October 1926, in Paris, Kapitsa became closely acquainted with Anna Krylova (1903-1996). In April 1927 they got married. Interestingly, Anna Krylova was the first to make a marriage proposal. Her father, Academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov, Pyotr Leonidovich knew for a very long time, since the commission of 1921. From the second marriage, two sons were born in the Kapitsa family:

Sergei (February 14, 1928, Cambridge - August 14, 2012, Moscow) Andrei (July 9, 1931, Cambridge - August 2, 2011, Moscow). They returned to the USSR in January 1936.

Together with Anna Alekseevna, Pyotr Leonidovich lived for 57 years. The wife helped Peter Leonidovich in the preparation of manuscripts. After the death of the scientist, she organized a museum in his house.

In his free time, Pyotr Leonidovich was fond of chess. While working in England, he won the Cambridgeshire County Chess Championship. He liked to make household utensils and furniture in his own workshop. Repaired old clocks.

Awards and prizes

Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1974)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1978)
Stalin Prize (1941, 1943)
Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1959)
Medals named after Faraday (England, 1942), Franklin (USA, 1944), Kotenius (GDR, 1959), Niels Bohr (Denmark, 1965), Rutherford (England, 1966), Kamerling-Onnes (Netherlands, 1968), Helmholtz (GDR) , 1981)
six orders of Lenin
Order of the Red Banner of Labor
Order of the Partisan Star (Yugoslavia, 1964)
medals
Honorary Lectures Rutherford Memorial Lecture (1969) and Bernal Lecture (1977) in England

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 gave new method air liquefaction through the cycle low pressure and a highly efficient 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).

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 to summer vacation to Scotland to study of English language. 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.

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 autumn 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.

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.

For 13 years 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. The International Series of Monographs in Physics, published by Oxford University Press, one of the founders and chief editors of which was Kapitsa, publishes monographs by theoretical physicists Georgy Antonovich Gamov and Yakov Ilyich Frenkel, and Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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, the physics and technology of low temperatures, the quantum physics of a condensed state, 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, for the first time, a pulsed method was developed to create a magnetic field by closing a powerful alternator and a number of fundamental results were obtained in the field of metal physics (linear increase in resistance in large fields, resistance saturation). and durations for decades have been record-breaking.

The need to conduct research in 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 Kapitza 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.

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 country” (from a letter Kapitsa to his wife dated December 4, 1934).

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 good people 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.

To Apica Pyotr 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 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 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 at 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 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 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 but successful scientific development new turbine method for producing oxygen and for the creation of a powerful turbo-oxygen plant for the production of liquid oxygen by 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 the 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), an honorary member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences (1946), the New York Academy of Sciences (USA, 1946), the Irish Royal Academy of Sciences (1948), the Academy of Sciences in Allahabad, India (1948), a 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), National Institute 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 of the "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 for Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he worked. The Russian Academy of Sciences established the P.L. Kapitsa (1994).

Date of birth: July 8, 1894
Place of birth: Kronstadt, Russian Empire
Date of death: April 8, 1984
Place of death: Moscow, Russia

Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa- Soviet physicist.

Pyotr Kapitsa was born on July 8, 1894 in Kronstadt in the family of a lieutenant general and a teacher. In 1905 he began to study at the gymnasium, but in 1906, due to problems with studying Latin, he began studying at the Kronstadt real school.

From 1914 to 1918 he studied at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, where he received the education of an electrical engineer.

From 1918 to 1921 he worked as a teacher and his talent was noticed by the physicist Ioffe, who invited Peter to cooperate in the study of atomic physics.

So, together with Ioffe and another physicist, his classmate Semenov, Kapitsa invented a method by which it was possible to measure the magnetic moment of an atom.

In 1916 he married, his wife gave birth to two children, but in 1920 all members of his family died from the epidemic - only Kapitsa remained.

In 1921, at the request of Maxim Gorky, Kapitsa left for England, where he began working in the laboratory at Rutherford in Cambridge. They soon became friends.

At Cambridge, Kapitsa studied radioactive particle nuclei in a magnetic field, which made it possible to create a strong electromagnet and the corresponding magnetic fields. Such equipment allowed the scientist to study the physics of low temperatures.

In 1934, he created an installation that made it possible to obtain helium in a liquid state in a shorter time and in greater quantities than was previously possible.

In 1923, Kapitsa received the title of Doctor of Science and a Maxwell scholarship, and a year later he became deputy director of the laboratory for magnetic research, and in 1925 became a member of Trinity College. In 1928, he received a doctorate in physical and mathematical sciences from the USSR, and a year later he became a member of the Academy of Sciences.

In 1930, Kapitsa was appointed professor of the Royal Society of London, which built a specially dedicated laboratory for him at the request of Rutherford.

In 1934, the laboratory was opened, was named Monda, and Kapitsa became its director, but a year later it had to be left, as the Soviet government canceled the visas of Kapitsa and his wife to leave the country.

Kapitsa remained in Moscow, while his wife returned to England, but later also moved to Moscow with her children to live with her husband. Kapitsa unsuccessfully tried to get the visas back, he attracted Rutherford for this, but the Soviet government was adamant.

In 1935, he became director of the Institute of Physical Problems at the Academy of Sciences, and agreed to the post on the condition that his equipment from England be delivered to Moscow.

At the Kapitsa Institute, he again took up low-temperature physics, studied the properties of liquid helium. In 1938 he created a new turbine for air liquefaction.

The new equipment allowed him to discover the superfluidity of helium and publish an article on this property. Taking advantage of his exceptional position, Kapitsa more than once defended physicists and colleagues from the purges carried out at that time by Stalin.

During the war years he lived in Kazan, worked on the development of an oxygen cryogenic installation, in 1943 he founded the Main Directorate for Oxygen and became its lava.

In the same years, the government invites him to work on atomic bomb together with Kurchatov, but Kapitsa, dissatisfied with the leadership of Beria, wrote a letter to Stalin asking him to release him from the project and was released.

In 1946, he was fired from his post and put under house arrest, he managed to recover only after Stalin's death.

In 1955, Kapitsa was again appointed director of the Institute for Physical Problems and worked there until his death.

After the war, he was engaged in hydrodynamics, the study of ball lightning, plasma. In the late 50s, he created a project for a thermonuclear reactor.

Being the director of the institute, he founded many scientific campuses throughout the country - in Novosibirsk, Moscow and other cities.

In 1965, he left the USSR for the first time during the years of the travel ban and visited Denmark, where he received the Bohr medal, a year later he visited England with a speech about Rutherford, and in 1969 the USA.

In 1978 he received the Nobel Prize.

Achievements of Peter Kapitsa:

Discovery of helium superfluidity, fusion reactor
Nobel Prize
Honorary Doctor of the World Academies of Sciences
6 Orders of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner of Labor, many awards from other countries
Stalin Prize
Lomonosov medal

Dates from the biography of Peter Kapitsa:

July 8, 1894 - was born in Kronstadt
1906-1914 - training in a real school
1914-1918 - study at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute
1921-1934 - work in Cambridge
1938 - discovery of the superfluidity of helium
1946-1955 - house arrest
1965 - Bora medal
1978 - Nobel Prize
April 8, 1984 - death

Interesting facts of Peter Kapitsa:

He was married twice, two children from his first marriage died, but in his second marriage he had two sons
Until the end of his life he kept English habits- smoked a pipe, lived in a cottage and wore tweed suits
He was fond of chess and the study of clock mechanisms
He constantly criticized the USSR and Stalin's policies, was adamant in his opinion and stubborn
The name of the scientist is the street, the school, the plane and the small planet
A medal was established in his honor

Russia (USSR)

Russian experimental physicist, one of the founders of the physics of low temperatures and the physics of strong magnetic fields. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 for his discoveries in the field of low temperature physics, which he made back in the 30s of the XX century ...

In 1934 P.L. Kapitsa went on vacation to the USSR, but the authorities not allowed he returned to Cambridge and was offered to become director of the Institute for Physical Problems, which was being created. Ernst Rutherford, resigned to the loss of one of his best employees, allowed the Soviet authorities to buy the laboratory equipment and send it to the USSR.

“However, in 1934, when he once again came to the USSR on vacation, the Soviet government forbade him to return to England - by right of force. deeply offended, Kapitsa yet he did not break down and did not even part with his socialist ideals. He compared himself "with a woman who wants to give herself for love, but who they certainly want to rape." For Soviet leaders, he used the expression "our idiots", and here both words are equally important: “I sincerely like our idiots, and they do wonderful things, and this will go down in history. [...] But what can you do if they do not understand anything in science [...] They (idiots), of course, can grow wiser tomorrow, and maybe only in 5-10 years. There is no doubt that they will grow wiser, since their life will make them do it. The only question is when?

Gorelik G., Andrey Sakharov. Science and freedom, M., Vagrius, 2004, p. 175-176.

In 1935 P.L. Kapitsa was appointed director of the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. In 1946, he was removed from the post of director and was engaged in research in the home laboratory he created at the dacha (in fact, it was house arrest). In 1955 P.L. Kapitsa re-appointed director of the Institute of Physical Problems.

Since 1935, P.L. Kapitsa sent And V. Stalin 49 unanswered emails. But if there were no letters for a long time, Stalin's secretary asked them to be sent by phone. “In his letters, Kapitsa continually cites historical examples. He directly points out to Stalin that since we cannot inspire a scientist with money, not like in capitalist America, we must at least give him his due, as they give the Patriarch. "It's still bacon noted in his New Atlantis. Therefore, it's time for comrades like Beria start learning respect for scientists.”
In 1949, Kapitsa was removed from the head of the department at the university because he was not at the meetings in honor of Stalin's 70th birthday.
They wanted to elect him to the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, but the Central Committee Suslov said that it was necessary to abstain, and abstained. They wanted to make him a member of the Academic Council of Moscow University, and this was banned.
Beria soon got his way, Kapitsa was fired from everywhere. Removed from work on oxygen needed by the country. The Stalin Prize awarded by the Academy of Sciences was cancelled. Of course, Beria, in the end, Kapitsa would have been punished. Stalin, knowing his satrap well, warned: "I'll take it off for you, but don't touch it."

Granin D.A., A man not from here, St. Petersburg, Lenizdat, 2014, p. 7.

"In January 1946, Academician Pyotr Kapitsa sent Stalin manuscript of the book of the historian of technology L. I. Gumilevsky"Russian Engineers", which was written with the support and initiative of Kapitsa. In a letter to Stalin, Kapitsa noted: “It is clear from this book:
1. A large number of major engineering initiatives originated here.
2. We ourselves almost did not know how to develop them.
3. Often the reason for not using innovation was that we usually underestimated our own and overestimated what was foreign. Now we need to intensify our own technology... We can only do this successfully when we finally understand that the creative potential of our people is not less, but even more than others, and we can safely rely on it. Stalin not only read L.I. Gumilevsky, but ordered to immediately publish it.

Roy Medvedev, Zhores Medvedev, Unknown Stalin, M., Vremya, 2007, p. 596.

P.L. Kapitsa repeatedly stood up before I.V. Stalin and subsequent for the oppressed scientists.