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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Kapitsa Petr Leonidovich. Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born on June 26 (July 9), 1894 in Kronstadt in the family of a military engineer, General Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa, builder of the Kronstadt fortifications. He was an educated, intelligent man, a gifted engineer who played an important role in the development of the Russian armed forces. Mother, Olga Ieronimovna, nee Stebnitskaya, was an educated woman. She was engaged in literature, pedagogical and social activities, leaving a mark on the history of Russian culture. Peter first studied for a year at the gymnasium, and then at the Kronstadt real school, from which he graduated with honors. Thanks to his abilities and passion for physics and electrical engineering, he was admitted without any restrictions to the physics room of the school. Here he set up chemical and physical experiments, repaired instruments. He especially enjoyed taking apart and reassembling watches. His interest in watches remained forever. There is a case when, already at a very respectable age, he repaired the watch of his old friend. In 1912, Kapitsa entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. In August 1914, the First World War broke out. Third-year student Peter Kapitsa, like many students, was mobilized into the army. For some time he served on the Polish front as a chauffeur of a sanitary detachment - he transported the wounded on a truck covered with tarpaulin. In 1916, after demobilization from the army, Kapitsa returned to the institute. Ioffe involved him in experimental work in the physics laboratory headed by him, as well as participation in his seminar - apparently one of the first physics seminars in Russia. In the same year, Kapitsa's first article appeared in the Journal of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society. In 1918, under incredibly difficult conditions, Ioffe founded in Petrograd one of the first scientific research physics institutes in Russia. Kapitsa was one of the first employees of this institute, which played a very important role in the development of Soviet experimental, theoretical and technical physics. After graduating from the Polytechnic Institute in the same year, Peter was left in it as a teacher of the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics. In the difficult post-revolutionary situation, Ioffe tried with all his might to save the seminar and his students - young physicists, among whom was Kapitsa. Almost all the participants of the seminar were experimenters and were in a very difficult situation: due to the lack of necessary materials, tools, devices, even a simple wire, it turned out to be the most difficult and red tape to assemble the experimental setup. And, nevertheless, the experiments were set, and quite complex. In 1920, Kapitsa and N. N. Semenov developed a method for determining the magnetic moment of an atom, using in it the interaction of an atomic beam with an inhomogeneous magnetic field. Ioffe insisted that Kapitsa should go abroad, but the revolutionary government did not give permission for this until Maxim Gorky, the most influential Russian writer of that time, intervened. Finally, Kapitsa was allowed to leave for England. He left in a depressed state: shortly before that, Peter experienced great grief: during the epidemic, his young wife, Nadezhda Chernosvitova, died (they got married in 1916) and their two small children. In May 1921, Kapitsa arrived in England. Kapitsa ended up in Rutherford's laboratory. Later, Peter Leonidovich will say about Rutherford: "I owe a lot to him and his kind attitude towards me." Simultaneously with attending the lectures, Kapitsa had to pass a physics practicum, which is obligatory for all those who begin work at the Cavendish Laboratory. Led by James Chadwick. The practicum was designed for two years, but Kapitsa, to everyone's surprise, passed all the tests within two weeks and immediately became famous among the laboratory staff, including Rutherford himself. This fame was also facilitated by a seminar organized by Kapitsa shortly after his arrival in Cambridge, called the "Kapitza club", at which students and young teachers got acquainted with interesting scientific problems, discussed the results of their own research, and sometimes had discussions on a wide variety of issues, including very far from physics. On behalf of Rutherford, Kapitsa began to study alpha particles. These were Rutherford's "favorite" particles, and almost all of his students were engaged in their study. Kapitsa had to determine the momentum of the alpha particle. In order to successfully carry out experiments on measuring the momentum of an alpha particle, Kapitsa needed a strong magnetic field. Work on the creation of superstrong magnetic fields gradually began to take on an independent character and later led Kapitsa away from measuring the momentum of an alpha particle to other works on solid state physics. Thus, he moved away from nuclear physics. However, the subject of his doctoral dissertation, which he defended at Cambridge in 1922, was "The passage of alpha particles through matter and methods for producing magnetic fields." The scientific authority of Kapitsa grew rapidly. He successfully moved up the steps of the academic hierarchy. In 1923, he became a doctor of science and received the prestigious Maxwell Fellowship. In 1924 he was appointed Associate Director of the Cavendish Laboratory for Magnetic Research and in 1925 became a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1928, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR awarded Kapitsa the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and in 1929 elected him its corresponding member. The following year, Kapitsa became a research professor at the Royal Society of London. At the insistence of Rutherford, the Royal Society is building a new laboratory specifically for Kapitsa. When Kapitsa began to implement his plans to determine the magnetic moment of an alpha particle, the experimenters produced strong magnetic fields using an electromagnet consisting of a coil and an iron core. The tension was 50 oersteds. It was impossible to rise above this figure because of the phenomenon of magnetic saturation of iron. After the saturation limit was reached, no matter how much the strength of the current passed through the electromagnet was increased, the field strength did not increase. Kapitsa, in front of Rutherford, made a technical revolution in the methods of experimental research. The powerful installation of Kapitsa, the very principle of research made a strong impression not only on Rutherford and his colleagues, but also on other scientists who visited Cambridge. With the light hand of Kapitsa, complex installations and improved instruments and apparatus began to appear more and more often in the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1934 Kapitsa became the first director of the new laboratory. But he was destined to work there for only one year. The creation of unique equipment for measuring temperature effects associated with the influence of strong magnetic fields on the properties of matter, such as magnetic resistance, led Kapitsa to study the problems of low temperature physics. To achieve such temperatures, it was necessary to have a large amount of liquefied gases. Developing fundamentally new refrigeration machines and installations, Kapitsa used all his remarkable talent as a physicist and engineer. The pinnacle of his creativity in this area was the creation in 1934 of an unusually productive installation for the liquefaction of helium, which boils or liquefies at a temperature of about 4,3 degrees Kelvin. In 1925, in Paris, Academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov introduced Kapitsa to his daughter Anna, who then lived with her mother in the capital of France. In 1927, Anna Alekseevna became the wife of Kapitsa. After his marriage, Kapitsa bought a small plot of land on Huntington Road, where he built a house according to his plan. Here his sons Sergey and Andrey were born. Both of them later became scientists. While in Cambridge, Kapitsa enjoyed riding a motorcycle, smoking a pipe and wearing tweed suits. He retained his English habits throughout his life. In Moscow, next to the Institute of Physical Problems, an English-style cottage was built for him. He ordered clothes and tobacco from England. Relations between Kapitsa and the Soviet government have always been somewhat mysterious and incomprehensible. During his thirteen years in England, Kapitsa returned several times to the Soviet Union with his second wife to give lectures, visit his mother, and spend holidays in some Russian resort. Soviet officials repeatedly asked him to stay permanently in the USSR. Pyotr Leonidovich was interested in such proposals, but put forward certain conditions, in particular freedom of travel to the West, which delayed the solution of the issue. At the end of the summer of 1934, Kapitsa and his wife once again came to the Soviet Union, but when the couple prepared to return to England, it turned out that their exit visas had been cancelled. After a furious but useless skirmish with officials in Moscow, Kapitsa was forced to stay in his homeland, while his wife was allowed to return to England to her children. Somewhat later, Anna Alekseevna joined her husband in Moscow, and the children followed her. Rutherford and other friends of Kapitsa appealed to the Soviet government with a request to allow him to leave to continue working in England, but in vain. In 1935, Kapitsa was offered to become director of the newly created Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, but before giving his consent, Kapitsa refused the offered post for almost a year. Rutherford, resigned to the loss of his outstanding collaborator, allowed the Soviet authorities to buy the equipment of Kapitsa's laboratory and send it by sea to the USSR. Negotiations, transportation of equipment and its installation at the Institute of Physical Problems took several years. The Kapitsa family settled right there, on the territory of the institute, in a mansion of several rooms. Stairs led from the hall to rooms upstairs. On the ground floor, in a large living room, there were glass cabinets with a collection of Khokhloma toys. The children of Kapitsa, the future scientists Sergey and Andrey, were then schoolchildren. On the installation delivered to Moscow from the Cavendish Laboratory, Kapitsa continued research in the field of superstrong magnetic fields. His Cambridge employees, who arrived in Moscow for a while, took part in the experiments - the mechanic Pearson and the laboratory assistant Lauerman. This work took several years. Kapitsa considered them very important. In 1943, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Pyotr Leonidovich said that, in his opinion, there are three main areas of research in physics: in the field of low temperatures, in the field of the nucleus, and, finally, in the field of solids. “Our institute,” Kapitsa said, “is working on the study of phenomena occurring at low temperatures, near absolute zero. I note that in recent years this area has been one of the fastest developing in physics, and many new and fundamental discoveries can be expected in it.” . In 1938, Kapitsa improved a small turbine that liquefied air very efficiently. He was able to detect an extraordinary decrease in the viscosity of liquid helium when cooled to a temperature below 2,17 K, at which it changes into a form called helium-2. The loss of viscosity allows it to flow freely through the smallest holes and even climb the walls of the container, as if "not feeling" the action of gravity. The absence of viscosity is also accompanied by an increase in thermal conductivity. Kapitsa called the new phenomenon he discovered superfluidity. Two of Kapitsa's former colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory, J. F. Allen and A. D. Mizener, carried out similar studies. All three published articles reporting their results in the same issue of the British magazine Nature. Kapitsa's 1938 paper and two other papers published in 1942 are among his most important papers on low temperature physics. Pyotr Leonidovich, who possessed an unusually high authority, boldly defended his views even during the purges carried out by Stalin in the late thirties. When Lev Landau, an employee of the Institute for Physical Problems, was arrested in 1938 on charges of spying for Nazi Germany, Kapitsa secured his release. To do this, he had to go to the Kremlin and threaten to resign from the post of director of the institute in case of refusal. In his reports to government representatives, Kapitsa openly criticized those decisions that he considered wrong. After the outbreak of the war, the Institute for Physical Problems was evacuated to Kazan. Upon arrival at the place, he was placed in the premises of Kazan University. In difficult times, Kapitsa created the world's most powerful turbine plant for large-scale production of the liquid oxygen required by industry. In 1945, work on the creation of nuclear weapons intensified in the Soviet Union. Kapitsa was removed from the post of director of the institute and was under house arrest for eight years. He was deprived of the opportunity to communicate with his colleagues from other research institutes. At his dacha, Pyotr Leonidovich equipped a small laboratory and continued to do research. Two years after Stalin's death, in 1955, he was reinstated as director of the Institute for Physical Problems and remained in this position until the end of his life. Kapitsa's post-war scientific work covers a wide variety of areas of physics, including the hydrodynamics of thin layers of liquid and the nature of ball lightning, but his main interests are focused on microwave generators and the study of various properties of plasma. Working in the fifties on the creation of a microwave generator, the scientist discovered that high-intensity microwaves generate a clearly observable luminous discharge in helium. By measuring the temperature at the center of the helium discharge, he found that at a distance of a few millimeters from the discharge boundary, the temperature changes by about two million degrees Kelvin. This discovery formed the basis for the design of a fusion reactor with continuous plasma heating. In addition to achievements in experimental physics, Kapitsa proved himself to be a brilliant administrator and educator. Under his leadership, the Institute for Physical Problems became one of the most productive and prestigious institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences, attracting many of the country's leading physicists. Kapitsa took part in the creation of a research center near Novosibirsk - Akademgorodok, and a new type of higher educational institution - the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The gas liquefaction plants built by Kapitsa found wide application in industry. The use of oxygen extracted from liquid air for oxygen blasting revolutionized the Soviet steel industry. In 1965, for the first time after more than thirty years, Kapitsa received permission to leave the Soviet Union for 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 made their first trip to the United States. Kapitsa possessed qualities that make him unusually interesting in communication. His erudition, deep knowledge of literature and art were amazing. He had plenty of time for everything when he was extremely busy with work. Kapitsa himself said that talent without efficiency, as a rule, does not give great results. Pyotr Leonidovich was distinguished by a lively sense of humor and highly valued it from others. There is a well-known anecdote about how an English company asked Kapitsa to fix problems in a new electric motor, which, for unknown reasons, refused to work. Kapitsa carefully examined the engine, turned it on and off several times, then asked for a hammer. Thinking, he hit the engine with a hammer, and - lo and behold! - the motor is running. The firm paid Kapitsa a thousand pounds in advance for this consultation. The representative of the company, seeing that the matter was resolved in a few minutes, asked Kapitsa to report in writing for the amount received. Kapitsa wrote that he estimated a blow with a hammer on the engine at 1 pound, and the remaining 999 pounds were paid to him because he knew exactly where to hit. On October 17, 1978, the Swedish Academy of Sciences sent a telegram from Stockholm to Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa about awarding him the Nobel Prize in Physics for fundamental research in the field of low temperature physics. From extremely low temperatures near absolute zero to extremely high temperatures necessary for the synthesis of atomic nuclei - such is the huge range of the tireless long-term work of Academician Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa. He died on April 8, 1984. Author: Samin D.K.
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