Kapitza, Rutherford and the Kremlin
Lawrence Badash
Yale University Press 1985
ISBN 0-300-014565-1
129 pages. Hard Cover.
10 black/white plates embedded in the text.
Purchasing Details.
Out of Print
My Comments on This Book
Of all the young scientists attracted to
work with Rutherford, only Kapitza and a radio scientist carved out
their own research fields. Kapitza was the most colourful and the one
with international intrigue.
After one year of working with Rutherford,
during which he confirmed that the alpha particle had no energy left at
the end of its range in air, Kapitza convinced Rutherford to fund the
development of methods of producing pulsed, but very high, magnetic
fields. As these might be of use to Rutherford's work, who had been the
first to use magnetic fields to deviate alpha particles, Rutherford
raised considerable sums in support of Kapitza, culminating in having
the Mond Laboratory built. By then Kapitza had expanded into low
temperature physics. So when Kapitza returned to Russia for his usual
summer visit in 1934 it was a shock to all to learn that Russia was not
allowing his return to Cambridge. Kapitza was thus forced to advance
science and technology in his homeland. Rutherford's fruitless,
behind-the-scenes then public negotiations were finally abandoned and
his last support of Kapitza was to allow Russia to purchase much of
Kapitza's equipment at the Cavendish. In 1978 Kapitza was awarded a
Nobel Prize in Physics for "his basic inventions and discoveries in the
area of low-temperature physics." His helium liquifier was
commercialised by Collins and the Arthur D Little companies and
facilitated low temperature research world-wide.
Larry Badash has drawn on Rutherford's
correspondence and papers, and Kapitza's correspondence to his wife.
She was still in Cambridge during the first year of his new life in
Russia so extracted parts of those letters for Rutherford.
Errors Noted. None known
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Contents
Contents |
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vii
|
Preface |
|
ix
|
Introduction |
|
1
|
Chapter |
|
|
1 |
Kapitza in Cambridge |
4
|
2 |
Rutherford's "Power Politics" |
20
|
3 |
Science and the Soviets |
37
|
4 |
Letters from the Soviet Union |
51
|
5 |
To Start Anew |
96
|
6 |
Epilogue |
111
|
Appendix |
|
117
|
Index |
|
125
|
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Reviews
Not known at this stage.
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