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Peter Kapitsa: The Scientist Who Talked Back to Stalin

1990; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 46; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00963402.1990.11459810

1938-3282

P. L. Kapit︠s︡a,

Russia and Soviet political economy

Peter (Pyotr) Leonidovich Kapitsa, the Soviet scientist, was born in 1894 and died in 1984. He received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978 for his work in low-temperature physics and was known for related achievements in liquefying helium and superfluidity, as well as the development of intense magnetic fields and investigations into plasma and thermonuclear physics. Much of his early work was done with Ernest Rutherford at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, where he spent 14 years. Later he founded the Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow.But Kapitsa was outspoken on political as well as scientific issues—scientific freedom, the environment, disarmament, peace—and this led to trouble with Soviet authorities. In June 1989 the Soviet weekly Ogonyok published a number of letters Kapitsa wrote to Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, along with a short account of Kapitsa's life and struggles, under the title, “The Scientist and the Dictator:” The article was followed by a response from Kapitsa's son Sergei, also a noted scientist.What follows is an adaptation of the Ogonyok articles. The letters and commentary were translated by Thomas Hoisington, and Sergei Kapitsa translated and elaborated his own statement. The story takes up at the end of Peter Kapitsa's sojourn in England.—Eds.