Pyotr Kapitsa

Russian and Soviet physicist (1894–1984)

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Pyotr Kapitsa

Overview

Born / Died

June 26, 1894 – April 8, 1984

Role

Russian and Soviet physicist (1894–1984)

Achievement

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.

Career

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.

Legacy

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (Russian: Пётр Леонидович Капица; Romanian: Petre Capița; 9 July [O.S.

Legacy

26 June] 1894 – 8 April 1984), also known as Peter Kapitza, was a Russian and Soviet physicist, whose research focused on low-temperature physics.

Who was Pyotr Kapitsa?

Pyotr Kapitsa lived from June 26, 1894 to April 8, 1984. 26 June] 1894, in Kronstadt, Russia, to the Bessarabian Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa (Romanian: Leonid Petrovici Capița), a military engineer who constructed fortifications, and to the Volhynian Olga Ieronimovna Kapitsa, from the Polish noble (szlachta) Stebnicki family. Besides Russian, the Kapitsa family also spoke Romanian. 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. 26 June] 1894 – 8 April 1984), also known as Peter Kapitza, was a Russian and Soviet physicist, whose research focused on low-temperature physics. He graduated from the Petrograd Polytechnical Institute in 1918. His wife and two children died in the flu epidemic of 1918–1919. Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, also known as Peter Kapitza, was a Russian and Soviet physicist, whose research focused on low-temperature physics.

Kapitsa (left) and Nikolay Semyonov, the physics and chemistry Nobel laureates (portrait by Boris Kustodiev, 1921).
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Historical significance

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978. 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 was the first director (1930–1934) of the Mond Laboratory in Cambridge.

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