P.L. Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems

September 25, 1934 P.L. Kapitsa was summoned to Moscow at the Council of People's Commissars and was categorically forbidden to leave the country to continue working in England. He was asked to think over the place and direction of his activities in the USSR. The scientist’s wife Anna Alekseevna recalled: “He was terribly shocked, incredible, everything collapsed. He lost the laboratory that was just built specially for him” - Mond’s laboratory in Cambridge. Only on December 23, 1934 was the Government decree "On the organization of the Institute of Physical Problems" (IFP) within the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

The Institute of Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences was founded by a Government decree dated December 23th, 1934. Its rather unusual name was chosen to signify that it would not necessarily be concerned with any particular branch of science, but that it would be a relatively small institute studying certain problems whose exact nature and scope would depend on the particular scientists working here.

The Institute was established by Soviet Government for Kapitza in 1934. Shortly there after, Kapitza discovered superfluidity helium. Landau clarify the quantum nature of this a mysterious phenomenon and developed a theory of quantum liquids. For this work Kapitsa and Landau was awarded the Nobel Prize (respectively 1978 and 1962).

After the Soviet government banned Kapitsa from leaving the USSR, he was forced to reconcile himself to being in the "golden cage." Khrushchev left an interesting version of choosing a place for the Institute in his memoirs: “Stalin proposed building the institute in the best place in Moscow. Then the Vorobyovy Gory was considered such a place. He rubbed himself into great political confidence and put forward a proposal to build a special building on the Lenin Hills. This site was allotted to him. But then, when Bullitt turned out to be not the same person as he imagined himself, Stalin was very resented and said: “Let’s build the institute on the site that was allocated for the construction of the US Embassy.”

P.L. Kapitsa was the son of a civil engineer, "grew up on a construction site", had a great experience working with the English architect Hugh Hughes to build his laboratory in Cambridge. The scientist tried with all his might to overcome the routine thinking and the low quality of the work of architects and builders. After 13 years of living in England, it was not easy for him to come to terms with the lack of basic professional skills among workers. Workers had to be trained and educated directly at the construction site. Peter Leonidovich developed a plan for the placement of laboratories, workshops, utility and administrative premises of the institute. He not only drew this plan with his own hand, but he himself had to get out the paper for the drawing. According to this master plan, the institute was built.

In January 1936, his wife and sons returned from Great Britain. The scientist’s fundamental discoveries followed — he developed a new method of liquefying air, which predetermined the development of large-scale plants for the production of oxygen, nitrogen and inert gases worldwide, established a temperature jump (“Kapitsa jump”) during the transfer of heat from a solid to liquid helium, and discovered superfluidity liquid helium etc.

At the beginning of 1937, the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov presented an intelligence message to Stalin, which stated, in particular, the following: “Soon it’s been three years since Kapitsa was left in the USSR. And although neither PL Kapitsa himself nor the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences The USSR does not want and cannot tell what Kapitsa is actually doing in the USSR, it can be stated with confidence that Kapitsa is secretly working on (at least) two of the largest technical problems of great economic and defense importance and these are being carried out by Kapitsa for their old English zyaev (rather than the USSR), which Kapitsa gathered at his institute as employees of a notorious anti-Soviet scum. "

In April 1938, Kapitsa stood up for the arrested head of the theoretical department of his institute L.D. Landau. Troubles continued for a whole year - it was not easy for the director to secure the release of a scientist who compared the Stalinist dictatorship with Hitler’s power. But, in the end, Kapitsa achieved his goal - Landau was released under his personal guarantee. He wrote to Stalin, defending the "idealists", protested against administrative interference in science, ridiculed statements like "if you are not a materialist in physics, you are an enemy of the people." Regarding Pravda’s refusal to print one of his notes in exact accordance with the author’s edition, he even dared to write to Stalin that Pravda was a boring newspaper, to which the "best friend of scientists" replied: "Of course, you are right, not Pravda "".

After atomic weapons were created and then used for military purposes in the USA, on August 20, 1945, a Special Committee was formed in the USSR to supervise "all work on the use of the atomic energy of uranium." Beria became the chairman, and of the physicists included only I.V. Kurchatov and P.L. Kapitsa. But immediately began a clash of Kapitsa with Beria. Twice, October 3 and November 25, 1945, Kapitsa writes letters to Stalin, indicating that the incompetent interference of an almighty person only impedes scientific development. In August 1946, Stalin signed a decree removing Kapitsa from all posts.

Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs: "Either before the war, or during the war, Stalin began to express discontent and even anger against Kapitsa, that Kapitsa does not give what he can give, that Kapitsa does not live up to our expectations, and other indignation." A two-story cottage of the director of the institute was placed behind the laboratory building. From his balcony overlooking Moscow. The Kapitsa family lived in the director’s house until 1946. That year, Kapitsa was repressed, removed from the post of director of the IFP and lived for more than eight years, mainly in a summer house in the village of Nikolina Gora. Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov, future academician and president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, was appointed director of the Institute of Physics. He lived in the director's house until 1955. Thus, two outstanding scientists lived in the walls of this house for twenty years. They received their friends here - fellow physicists, artists, writers.

Only after the death of the bloody dictator, the arrest and execution of Beria, did Kapitsa's position in the scientific world and society be restored. In August 1953, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences adopted a resolution on the assistance of P.L. Kapitza was in his work, and in January 1955 he was again appointed director of the Institute of Physics and Physics and became editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics.

Two other works carried out at the Institute, the theory of superconductivity Gizburga-Landau and Abrikosov theory of second order superconductors have been recognized by the Nobel Committee (Abrikosov and Ginsburg, 2003). The key experimental and theoretical work in the field of superconductivity (intermediate state, thermal conductivity) of the electron spectrum of metals (Fermi surface, surface levels in a magnetic field, the effect of interference of electrons in a metal), of superfluid helium (Kapitza jump, second sound, viscosity superfluid spin current in helium-3), quantum crystals (quantum diffusion, crystallization wave faceting phase transitions) magnetism (antiferromagnetic resonance, weak ferromagnetism, magneto-electric effect, light scattering by magnons, spin waves) were carried out at the Institute.

The Institute has made a significant contribution to the science, technology and defense capability of the country. The Landau-Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics was wrighten in the Institute. The Institute has established magazines JETP, JETP Letters, IET. IPP is currently research and educational institutions in low temperature physics.