Kapitsa was born in
Kronstadt,
Russian Empire, to the
Bessarabian Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa (), a
military engineer who constructed fortifications, and to the
Volhynian Olga Ieronimovna Kapitsa, from a
noble Polish Stebnicki family. Besides
Russian, the Kapitsa family also spoke
Romanian. (seated fourth from left) in 1915 Kapitsa's studies were interrupted by the
First World War, in which he served as an ambulance driver for two years on the
Polish front. He graduated from the
Petrograd Polytechnical Institute in 1918. His wife and two children died in the flu epidemic of 1918–19. He subsequently studied in
Britain, working for over ten years with
Ernest Rutherford in the
Cavendish Laboratory at the
University of Cambridge, and founding the influential
Kapitza club. He was the first director (1930–34) of the
Mond Laboratory in Cambridge. In the 1920s he originated techniques for creating ultrastrong
magnetic fields by injecting high
current for brief periods into specially constructed air-core
electromagnets. In 1928 he discovered the linear relation between resistivity and magnetic field strength in various metals under very strong magnetic fields. As his equipment for high-magnetic field research remained in Cambridge (although later Ernest Rutherford negotiated with the British government the possibility of shipping it to the USSR), he changed the direction of his research to the study of low temperature phenomena, beginning with a critical analysis of the existing methods for achieving low temperatures. In 1934 he developed new and original apparatus (based on the
adiabatic principle) for making significant quantities of
liquid helium. Kapitsa participated in formation of the
Institute for Physical Problems, in part using equipment which the Soviet government bought from the Mond Laboratory in Cambridge (with the assistance of Rutherford, once it was clear that Kapitsa would not be permitted to return). In Russia, Kapitsa began a series of experiments to study
liquid helium. This research culminated with the 1937 discovery of
superfluidity (another expression of the
state of matter that gives rise to
superconductivity). Beginning with a letter to the editor of
Science on 8 January 1938 where he reported the absence of measurable viscosity in liquid helium-4 cooled below 1.8 K, Kapitza documented the properties of helium-4 superfluid in a series of papers. This was the body of work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics". In 1939 he developed a new method for liquefaction of air with a low-pressure cycle using a special high-efficiency expansion turbine. Consequently, during World War II he was assigned to head the Department of Oxygen Industry attached to the
USSR Council of Ministers, where he developed his low-pressure expansion techniques for industrial purposes. He invented high power microwave generators (1950–1955) and discovered a new kind of continuous high pressure plasma discharge with electron temperatures over 1,000,000 K. In November 1945 Kapitsa quarreled with
Lavrentiy Beria, head of the
NKVD and in charge of the
Soviet atomic bomb project, writing to
Joseph Stalin about Beria's ignorance of physics and his arrogance. Stalin backed Kapitsa, telling Beria he had to cooperate with the scientists. Kapitsa refused to meet Beria: "If you want to speak to me, then come to the Institute." Stalin offered to meet Kapitsa, but this never happened. Immediately after the war, a group of prominent Soviet scientists (including Kapitsa in particular) lobbied the government to create a new technical university, the
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Kapitsa taught there for many years. From 1957, he was also a member of the presidium of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences and at his death in 1984 was the only presidium member who was not also a member of the
Communist Party. In 1966 Kapitsa was allowed to visit Cambridge to receive the
Rutherford Medal and Prize. While dining at his old college,
Trinity, he found he did not have the required
gown. He asked to borrow one, but a college servant asked him when he last dined at
high table, "Thirty-two years" replied Kapitza. Within moments the servant returned, not with any gown, but Kapitsa's own. , the physics and chemistry Nobel laureates (portrait by
Boris Kustodiev, 1921). In 1978 Kapitsa won the
Nobel Prize in Physics "for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of
low-temperature physics" and was also cited for his long term role as a leader in the development of this area. He shared the prize with
Arno Allan Penzias and
Robert Woodrow Wilson, who won for discovering the
cosmic microwave background.
Kapitsa resistance is the thermal resistance (which causes a temperature discontinuity) at the interface between
liquid helium and a solid. The
Kapitsa–Dirac effect is a
quantum mechanical effect consisting of the diffraction of electrons by a
standing wave of light. In
fluid dynamics, the
Kapitza number is a dimensionless number characterizing the flow of thin films of fluid down an incline. == Personal life ==