The National Academy of Sciences added a "foreign associate" to its goodly company: Russian physicist Peter Kapitza, Hero of Socialist Labor. He was worthy of the honor. Besides a monster string of Soviet decorations, he held medals from Belgium, Britain, and the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia.
His worthiness was not new. Since the National Academy had received no scientific paper of his since 1941, its action was prompted as much by political as by scientific considerations. Few if any U.S. academicians were Communist partisans. But nearly all scientists look back with longing to their golden age before Hitler and World War...
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