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Published December 1, 1978 | public
Journal Article

The 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics

Abstract

One-half of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics is to be awarded to Peter L. Kapitsa, director of the Institute for Physical Problems, U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Moscow, for his basic inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics. A review of the record shows Kapitsa to be not only a very competent scientist, but also a talented engineer and a successful technical manager. As his career has, on occasion, become embroiled in Russian politics and the continuing struggle between the individual and the state in the Soviet Union, he enjoys considerable world renown beyond the narrow confines of the physics community. In the popular press, in fact, he has come to be somewhat lionized as a leading scientist who defied Stalin and yet survived to continue as an important scientific contributor. Kapitsa endured harrowing experiences in arriving at the condition of octogenarian in his Mother Russia, but he was also given many honors by successive regimes therein. With all these facts taken together, Kapitsa is a figure who looms large on the world stage, and it is presumably with this combination in mind that the Nobel Committee made its selection, 40 years after his most significant contributions to low-temperature physics.

Additional Information

© 1978 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023