Kapitsa - one of the few Soviet scientists to receive a Nobel Prize. Pyotr Kapitsa was bom in Petrograd in 1894, attended Petrograd Polytechnic and in 1921 went to Cambridge. He worked with Sir Rutherford and became an assistant director of magnetic research at Cavendish laboratory, fellow of Trinity college and a member of the Royal society. In 1934 Kapitsa went to a professional meeting in Moscow from which he never returned. When the American atomic secrets were passed to Soviets in the fifties, Kapitsa was one of the few scientists in the Soviet Union who understood Quantum Mechanics and was therefore placed in charge of developing the Soviet atomic bomb. But the importance of transistor was still not understood by the Party.
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