Kapitza, Peter, Russian Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa 1894-1984
Soviet physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Kronstadt, he studied at Petrograd (now St Petersburg) and under Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge, where he became assistant director of magnetic research at the Cavendish Laboratory (1924-32). He returned to the USSR in 1934, and was appointed director of the Institute of Physical Problems where he engineered a helium liquefier to investigate the extraordinary 'superfluid' properties of helium-2. He was dismissed in 1946 for refusing to work on the atomic bomb, but was reinstated in 1955. He is known for his work on highintensity magnetism, on low temperature, and on the liquefaction of hydrogen and helium, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics, jointly with Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, in 1978. In the 1970s he defended dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov from expulsion from the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Bibliography: F Zedrov, Kapitsa: zhizn i otkrytiia (1979)