Kapitsa, Pyotr Leonidovich
Kapitsa, Pyotr Leonidovich (1894-1984), a Russian physicist. He shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on intense magnetic fields and the generation of low temperatures. He developed methods for liquefying large quantities of helium and oxygen. Kapitsa studied in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and at Cambridge University, whose faculty he joined. In 1934 he visited Russia and was forced to stay. He became director of the Institute for Physical Problems and aided in the development of Sputnik I.