The life story of Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, one of the founding fathers of Phystech, is worthy of the directors' attention. In it, bright ups were replaced by steep falls.
Only the absolute honesty and firm character of the scientist remained constant.
Physicist Kapitsa. Favorite of the great Rutherford
In the family of a nobleman, fortifier Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa and his wife, collector of folklore Olga Ieronimovna (nee Stebnitskaya), Peter was the second child. He was born in 1894, at the beginning of July, in the port city of Kronstadt. Becoming a high school student at the age of eleven, a year later the future physicist transferred to the school - the poor academic performance in Latin affected. But within the walls of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic, where Kapitsa entered the Electromechanical Faculty immediately after completing the eight-year school, he, a talented student, was quickly noticed. Yes, not just anyone, but the "father of Soviet physics" Ioffe himself, who, without wasting time, attracted Peter to work in his laboratory.
From Scotland, where Kapitsa went in the summer of 1914 in order to improve his English, he returned only in the fall - the First World War intervened. Voluntarily joining the ranks of the Russian Imperial Army, the future scientist got a job as a driver of an ambulance. The service was not easy. The car with the wounded often fell into the shelling zones, but fate kept the young physicist for future discoveries.
Kapitsa and Semyonov, double portrait.
Returning after demobilization to St. Petersburg, Kapitsa continued his studies, work in Ioffe's laboratory, and got married. The chosen one of Peter Leonidovich was Nadezhda Chernosvitova, the daughter of a member of the cadet faction.
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In 1916, twenty-two-year-old Kapitsa, a third-year student, published his first scientific works at the ZhRFHO. Three years later, he graduated from the institute, but he was in no hurry to leave the alma mater - he remained as a teacher, while combining work at the institute and experimental activities.
The tragic events of the winter of 1919 - 1920, when almost all members of the family of Pyotr Leonidovich died from the "Spanish flu", severely crippled the scientist, he even thought about suicide. Saved, oddly enough, work. More precisely, an internship at the leading English laboratory - Cavendish, organized by Professor Ioffe. Having fallen under the leadership of the "father" of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford, Kapitsa very quickly won the respect of the latter. Over time, a friendship even struck up between scientists, as evidenced by the well-known nickname "crocodile", which Peter Leonidovich gave to his mentor.
For thirteen years Cambridge was Kapitsa's second home. Within the walls of the university, he became a doctor of sciences, carried out a number of studies, received a grant for a laboratory, and even organized his own club. Changes took place in the personal life of the young physicist. Having married Anna, the daughter of the famous shipbuilder Krylov, in 1927, Petr Leonidovich since then almost never parted with his wife, who became a real support and support for him. The family had two sons - later famous scientists Sergei and Andrei.
Scientist and authority
While working abroad, Kapitsa, a true patriot of his country, invited many beginning Soviet scientists to the Cavendish (and not only) laboratory and gave them a start in scientific life. However, the leadership of the USSR, which repeatedly insisted that the physicist change his place of residence and stay in the Union, was extremely worried that Pyotr Leonidovich was advising British firms (read - he was spreading secret information about the state of affairs in Soviet science). Returning to the USSR (Kapitsa did this every year) to visit his family and friends, the scientist received the news: "Your English visa has been canceled."
Pyotr Kapitsa in the 1930s.
The outstanding physicist was caught in a trap. Letters from prominent scientists, to whom he asked to petition for his return to Cambridge, were not successful. Reconciled with his fate, Kapitsa became involved in scientific activity "for the benefit of socialist construction." For five years, from 1936 to 1941, he managed to make a number of discoveries: to establish a jump in temperature, to develop a new method of liquefying air, to detect the superfluidity of liquid helium.
A few words should also be said about Kapitsa's relationship with the Kremlin rulers. He did not become a member of the Communist Party, for fifty years the physicist addressed more than three hundred letters to the Soviet leadership (fifty to Stalin personally). In them, he not only defended his views on Soviet science, but also acted as an advocate for many eminent scientists.
Peter Kapitsa. Academician and Nobel laureate
The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War forced Kapitsa and his entire IPP (at the beginning of 1935, the scientist became the director of the Institute of Physical Problems) to evacuate to Kazan, where for two years work was underway to introduce special oxygen plants into industrial production. The physicist returned to the capital only in the summer of 1943.
Having become a member of the top-secret Special Committee for the creation of an atomic bomb, organized in 1945, headed by Lavrentiy Beria, Petr Leonidovich could not find peace. This activity - the manufacture of "weapons of mass murder" - heavily burdened him. In a written appeal to Stalin, the scientist made a request to release him from this work, referring (for a formal reason) to the difficult relationship with his superiors. Kapitsa's petition was granted, but at the same time he was removed from the post of director of the IFP. Moreover, Peter Leonidovich fell into disgrace for many years. The "thaw" began only after Stalin's death, when he, a house prisoner who settled and equipped a laboratory on Nikolina Gora, was allowed to return to his native institute and continue to engage in scientific activities so beloved by him.
Academician Peter Kapitsa.
Controlled thermonuclear reaction has become Kapitsa's main interest in recent years. The Nobel Prize was added to the two Stalin Prizes, as well as the opportunity to travel abroad after a thirty-year break. Even in old age, the scientist was not afraid to express his point of view to the authorities, rightly believing that the compass in life is conscience, with which no compromises are possible. Not having lived three months before the ninety anniversary, Pyotr Leonidovich died of a stroke.
