Biography

Pjotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born in Kronstadt, near Leningrad, on the 9th July 1894, son of Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa, military engineer, and Olga Ieronimovna née Stebnitskaia, working in high education and folklore research.

Kapitsa began his scientific career in A.F. Ioffe's section of the Electromechanics Department of the Petrograd Polytechnical Institute, completing his studies in 1918. Here, jointly with N.N. Semenov, he proposed a method for determining the magnetic moment of an atom interacting with an inhomogeneous magnetic field. This method was later used in the celebrated Stern-Gerlach experiments.

At the suggestion of A.F. Ioffe in 1921 Kapitsa came to the Cavendish Laboratory to work with Rutherford. In 1923 he made the first experiment in which a cloud chamber was placed in a strong magnetic field, and observed the bending of alfa-particle paths. In 1924 he developed methods for obtaining very strong magnetic fields and produced fields up to 320 kilogauss in a volume of 2 cm³. In 1928 he discovered the linear dependence of resistivity on magnetic field for various metals placed in very strong magnetic fields. In his last years in Cambridge Kapitsa turned to low temperature research. He began with a critical analysis of the methods that existed at the time for obtaining low temperatures and developed a new and original apparatus for the liquefaction of helium based on the adiabatic principle (1934).

Kapitsa was a Clerk Maxwell Student of Cambridge University (1923-1926), Assistant Director of Magnetic Research at Cavendish Laboratory (1924-1932), Messel Research Professor of the Royal Society (1930-1934), Director of the Royal Society Mond Laboratory (1930-1934). With R.H. Fowler he was the founder editor of the International Series of Monographs on Physics (Oxford, Clarendon Press).

In 1934 he returned to Moscow where he organized the Institute for Physical Problems at which he continued his research on strong magnetic fields, low temperature physics and cryogenics.

In 1939 he developed a new method for liquefaction of air with a lowpressure cycle using a special high-efficiency expansion turbine. In low temperature physics, Kapitsa began a series of experiments to study the properties of liquid helium that led to discovery of the superfluidity of helium in 1937 and in a series of papers investigated this new state of matter.

During the World War II Kapitsa was engaged in applied research on the production and use of oxygen that was produced using his low pressure expansion turbines, and organized and headed the Department of Oxygen Industry attached to the USSR Council of Ministers.

Late in the 1940's Kapitsa turned his attention to a totally new range of physical problems. He invented high power microwave generators - planotron and nigotron (1950- 1955) and discovered a new kind of continuous high pressure plasma discharge with electron temperatures over a million K.

Kapitsa is director of the Institute for Physical Problems. Since 1957 he is a member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was one of the founders of the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute (MFTI), and is now head of the department of low temperature physics and cryogenics of MFTI and chairman of the Coordination Council of this teaching Institute. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics and member of the Soviet National Committee of the Pugwash movement of scientists for peace and disarmament.

He was married in 1927 to Anna Alekseevna Krylova, daughter of Academician A.N. Krylov. They have two sons, Sergei and Andrei.

Honorary degrees

D.Phys.-Math.Sc., USSR Academy of Sciences, 1928

D.Sc., Algiers University, 1944, Sorbonne, 1945

D.Ph., Oslo University, 1946

D.Sc., Jagellonian University, 1964; Technische Universität Dresden, 1964; Charles University, 1965; Columbia University, 1969; Wroclaw Technical University, 1972; Delhi University, 1972; Université de Lausanne, 1973

D.Ph., Turku University, 1977

Honorary memberships

Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1939 (corresponding member - 1929)

Fellow of the Royal Society, London, 1929; French Physical Society, 1931

Institute of Physics, England, 1934; International Academy of Astronautics, 1964

Honorary Member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, 1935

the Institute of Metals, England, 1943

the Franklin Institute, 1944

Trinity College Cambridge, 1925

New York Academy of Sciences, 1946

Indian Academy of Sciences, 1947

the Royal Irish Academy, 1948

National Institute of Sciences of India, 1957

German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina", 1958

International Academy of the History of Science, 1971

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India, 1977

Foreign Member of Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 1946

National Academy of Sciences, USA, 1946

Indian National Sciences Academy, 1956

Polish Academy of Sciences, 1962

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1966

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1968

Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, 1969

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1971

Finnish Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1974

Honorary Fellow of Churchill College Cambridge, 1974

Awards

Medal of the Liége University, 1934

Faraday Medal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1942

Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute, 1944

Sir Devaprasad Sarbadhikary Gold Medal of the Calcutta University, 1955

Kothenius Gold Medal of the German Academy of Naturalists "Leopoldina", 1959

Frédéric Joliot-Curie Silver Medal of the World Peace Committee, 1959

Lomonosov Gold Medal of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1959

Great Gold Medal of the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements, 1962

Medal for Merits in Science and to Mankind of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1964

International Niels Bohr Medal of Dansk Ingeniørvorening, 1964

Rutherford Medal of the Institute of Physics and Physical Society, England, 1966

Golden Kamerlingh Onnes Medal of the Netherlands Society of Refrigeration, 1968

Copernic Memorial Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 1974

USSR State Prize - 1941, 1943

Simon Memorial Award of the Institute of Physics and Physical Society, England, 1973

Rutherford Memorial Lecture, Royal Society of London; Bernal Memorial Lecture, Royal Society of London, 1976

Order of Lenin- 1943, 1944, 1945, 1964, 1971, 1974

Hero of Socialist Labour, 1945, 1974

Order of the Red Banner of Labour, 1954

Order of the Jugoslav Banner with Ribbon, 1967

Publications

Collected Papers of P.L. Kapitsa, 3 vol., Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1964 - 1967

High Power Microwave Electronics, Pergamon Press, 1964

Experiment. Theory. Practice. "Nauka", Moscow, 1977

Le livre du problème de physique, CEDIC, Paris, 1977

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1978, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1979

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.

 

Pyotr Kapitsa died on April 8, 1984.

 

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1978