April 8, 1984 – Death of Piotr Kapitsa, Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the Physics of Low Temperatures

Russian physicist Piotr Kapitsa was born in Kronstadt (present-day Russia) in 1894. He studied and taught at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute and later at the University of Cambridge, where he worked with the British physicist and chemist Ernest Rutherford.

In 1924, as assistant director for magnetism research at the Cavendish Laboratory, he created devices capable of generating very high intensity magnetic fields.

He was also a member of Trinity College and the Royal Society. In the 1930s, he began his research in low-temperature physics at the Royal Society Mond Laboratory, built especially for him in 1932 and of which he was director for several years.

In 1934 he was forced to continue his investigations in Moscow when he was arrested by Stalin's direct order during a professional trip to the Soviet Union. A year later he was appointed director of the Institute for Physics Problems in Moscow and, in 1937, he discovered superfluidity with the help of Misener and Allen.

However, he soon after lost all his privileges and was dismissed from the institute by order of Stalin for refusing to participate in the development of nuclear weapons during World War II. After Stalin's death, he managed to regain his position and continued to make contributions to the area of low-temperature physics.

In 1978 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his many invaluable contributions. Kapitsa died in Moscow on April 8, 1984, at the age of 89.

If you want to know more, click on the following link: Piotr Kapitsa