Great Britain: Return of the Vanished

Return of the Vanished

Peter Kapitsa was once a big name in British science. The son of a czarist general, he arrived in Britain in 1921, broke but brilliant, and won a fellowship at Cambridge University. Soon he was astonishing his fellows with experiments in low temperatures and magnetic fields. Honors were showered on him, and Cambridge built him a special $75,000 laboratory for his work. Then in 1934 Kapitsa returned to Russia for a scientific convention, and Stalin refused to let him leave. Over the years, a few rumors about Kapitsa leaked out, putting him variously as head of...

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