Word: kapitza
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Some 14 years ago big-eyed, bushy-haired Peter Kapitza emerged from Leningrad's Polytechnical Institute, went to England's Cambridge, puttered with radioactivity. It occurred to him that he might learn much about the atom if he could wrench at it with tremendous magnetic forces. His first apparatus was a battery of accumulators short-circuiting through a wire coil, producing a momentary magnetic field of high power. Next he designed a huge dynamo to provide the short-circuiting power. With this the coils blew up. Kapitza stopped that by chilling the coils with liquid helium...
British science was impressed. Kapitza was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, first alien to be thus honored in two centuries. To house his generator, helium liquefier and other equipment, an ornate new laboratory was built in the courtyard of Cavendish Laboratory, with steel and scarlet furniture in the director's office, separate rooms for the heavy apparatus, vibration-damping walls, an Eric Gill plaque of Lord Rutherford, boss of Cavendish Laboratory, in the entrance hall. Cost: $75,000. Happy Dr. Kapitza went in as director, started investigating the magnetic resistance of substances at low temperatures. At three...
...that crucial point Dr. Kapitza went to his native land to attend a convention. When he started to return to England, the Soviet Government refused him permission to leave, explained bluntly that his services were needed at home. Peter Kapitza wailed that his work was in pure science, could not possibly push the Second Five-Year Plan. The high command, with an eye for prestige as well as services, was adamant. The Soviet Embassy in London issued a statement...
...Kapitza has been appointed director of the new Institute of Physical Research. . . . This institute was especially founded for him by the Soviet Government. Large sums were set aside for the building and its equipment under the directorship of Professor Kapitza. ... As far as his personal life is concerned he is comfortably situated and receiving adequate remuneration...