The Russian physicist Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (1894-1984) made notable contributions to knowledge of atomic structures and to understanding the behavior of matter in strong magnetic fields and at extremely low temperatures.

Pyotr Kapitsa was born on July 8, 1894, in Kronstadt near St. Petersburg (Leningrad) and was raised in Tsaritsyn (Volgorad). He obtained his education in the physical sciences and engineering at the high school of Kronstadt and at the Polytechnic Institute of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), from which he graduated in 1918. The following year he became a lecturer at the Polytechnic Institute. He published six papers between 1916 and 1921, which clearly reveal his wide-ranging interests and his skillful and ingenious experimentation.

On the recommendation of a colleague and the personal intercession of a well-known Russian writer, Kapitsa was able to leave the country in 1921 as a member of a scientific mission representing the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In July of that...