Serhii Kapytsia (Sergei Kapitsa) is dead. Several generations of our fellow citizens were nurtured by the TV program Evident, but Incredible, which he hosted from 1972 to 2012, setting the record for being the longest serving host.
It is easy to round up a flock of sheep. Herding cats is a challenge.
Serhii Kapytsia
There is an English proverb: “It takes three generations to make a gentleman.” It is often the case with science, too. Talent is not a privilege of class, but environment is crucial for its development.
The century that passed gave the world a dynasty of scientists. It began with the family of a military engineer Leonid Petrovych Kapytsia and his wife, Olha Ieronimivna. Leonid Kapytsia (b.1864 – d.1919), offspring of a noble Polish family of the Kapytsia (Kapica)-Milewskis, studied at the Nikolaevsky Military Engineering Technical University in Saint Petersburg. General Major Kapytsia later served at the Corps of Engineers and supervised the construction of Kronstadt’s Forts.
His wife, Olha Ieronimivna Kapytsia (nee Stebnytska) (b.1866 – d.1937) was a pedagogue, expert in children’s literature and folklore. Her father, Ieronim Ivanovych Stebnytsky (b.1832 – d. 1897), a cartographer and corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, was chief cartographer and land surveyor in the Caucasus. Olha graduated from the Bestuzhev Courses [the largest and most prominent women’s higher education institution in Imperial Russia. – Ed.]. Later she taught at the pre-school department of the Herzen Pedagogical Institute.
Their son Petro Kapytsia (Pyotr Kapitsa) studied at the Petrograd Polytechnical Institute. The talented student of the electromechanical department got an invitation from the famous physicist Abram Ioffe to join the Physics and Technology division of the newly-created State Institute of Roentgenology and Radiology (renamed Physico-Technical Institute in 1921).
Thanks to Academician Aleksey Krylov, a renowned naval engineer and mathematician, and the writer Maxim Gorky, Petro Kapytsia was sent to England in 1921, as a member of a special commission. On Ioffe’s recommendation, he started work at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, under the great nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford. The young scientist soon won respect of his colleagues, thanks to his talents in engineering and experimentation. He became widely known in academic community for his research into ultrastrong magnetic fields.
In October, 1926 in Paris Petro Kapytsia met Krylov’s daughter Anna (b.1903 – d.1996). They married in April, 1927. Curiously, Anna Krylova was the first to propose her hand in marriage. They lived 57 years together. The scientist’s wife assisted him with his manuscripts and staunchly endured all the hardships of Soviet life, inevitable with the very bold views, expressed by her husband, who selflessly rescued the scientists sentenced to the Gulag. Thus, he literally dragged academicians Fok and Landau out of the execution cellar.
The couple had two sons: Serhii (Sergei) (b. February 14, 1928, Cambridge – d. August 14, 2012, Moscow) and Andrii (Andrei) (b. July 9, 1931, Cambridge – d. August 2, 2011, Moscow). Both became great scientists. Serhii was a physicist, while Andrei became a geographer and geomorphologist. Serhii’s godfather was Ivan Pavlov, the famous physiologist and Nobel laureate.
The Kapytsia’s big house in Cambridge saw the elite of modern physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Most of their guests at some point in time became Nobel laureates. Besides, among their visitors were writers, poets, and painters. Serhii Kapytsia was growing in this intellectual environment until 1935.
Petro Kapytsia’s activity in Cambridge drew special attention of the Soviet regime. The historian Vladimir Yesakov believes that a scheme for Kapytsia had been developed long before 1934. From August to October 1934 the Politburo passed a number of resolutions, signed by Lazar Kaganovich, ordering the scientist’s detention in the USSR.
Another reason for such special focus on Kapytsia was the flight of some famous scholars from the workers and peasants’ state. Early in the 1930s chemists Vladimir Ipatieff and Aleksey Chichibabin refused to return from their mission abroad. A similar story with the young researchers, physicist George Gamow and genetic scientist Theodosius Dobzhansky, caused a sensation in academic circles. Petro Kapytsia helped them abroad, which angered the Soviet government.
To lure Kapytsia to the USSR, a Soviet spy William Fischer (aka Rudolf Abel) was sent for him. Fischer succeeded in convincing Kapytsia that the latter would be allowed to return to England after he had seen his family in the fatherland. As usual, the Soviets never kept the promise, and Kapytsia was never let out of the USSR.
In England, the Kapytsias had a traditional lifestyle. Serhii was sent to the choir at Cambridge’s major cathedral, where all professors’ children went. But Serhii had no vocal talents, so his singing classes soon stopped. Petro Kapytsia had bought his sons a Meccano model construction kit. The three of them spent hours making all sorts of machines. This was when the boys acquired their first engineering skills. When Petr Kapytsia built and launched the first elementary particle accelerator, young Serhii was the second person (after Rutherford) to watch the process of atom bombardment.
The brothers went to the USSR together with their mother in 1935. They had to go to school with absolutely different teaching principles. The first thing they had to master was to read and write in Russian. Teachers thoroughly purged the remains of bourgeois schooling from Serhii’s head. In 1943, he completed the secondary school in Kazan and applied at the aircraft engineering department at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI).
In 1946, Petro Kapytsia was dismissed from the leadership of the Institute for Physical Problems. He was exiled to a dacha in the village of Nikolina Gora outside Moscow, under a close supervision of the secret police. The father and son furnished a physical laboratory at home, where they made various experiments.
Serhii Kapytsia started his scientific career in 1949. He worked in such areas of physics as supersonic aerodynamics, terrestrial magnetism, applied aerodynamics, and elementary particle physics. Since 1956, he taught at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). In 1961 he got a doctoral degree in physics and mathematics, and in 1965 became a professor of the same Institute. From 1965 to 1998, Kapytsia taught at the department of general physics. For a certain period, he also was chair of general physics.
In 1973, Kapytsia published a book Zhyzn nauki (Life of Science), which anticipated the TV program Evident, but Incredible. It is remarkable that the idea of hosting a TV program was prompted by an interview, given by his father. A well-known TV hostess wanted to compliment Petro Kapytsia and remarked that he had a famous son. To this, the witty Nobel laureate replied, “I am famous, while Serhii is only well-known, so far.” Since 2006, Kapytsia presided over the international popular science film festival, The World of Knowledge.
Kapytsia authored four monographs, scores of articles and made 14 inventions and one discovery. He is credited with the creation of phenomenological mathematical model of hyperbolic global population growth. Kapytsia was the first to prove the fact of hyperbolic growth of global population starting with the first year of our era. This model accounted for a number of regulations, including some empirically established demographic rules.
His contribution to the dissemination of science was colossal. Kapytsia relentlessly fought pseudo-science and all that threatened with the return of obscurantism. Sadly, the ranks of such devotees of science are diminishing. Now, yet another is gone.
COMMENTARY
“HE WROTE FOR OUR MAGAZINE SVITOHLIAD”
Yaroslav YATSKIV, academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Merited Worker in Science and Technology of Ukraine, President of the Ukrainian Astronomical Association:
“In his last years, I mostly contacted Serhii Kapytsia not as a researcher, but as a man interested in the progress and dissemination of science. In the evening of life, Kapytsia devoted a lot of time to championing the proper place of science in society, despite all economic worries. It was necessary to show our society that we may not forget science and its progress, as this is the future of our country. Kapysia assisted this idea, so we would meet in Kyiv in the circles, which this way or another were involved in the popularization of science.
“As president of the International Committee for Science and Culture under Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, for many years I hosted evening meetings at the Teacher’s House, devoted to various issues of Ukrainian and international academic life. Serhii Kapytsia also delivered talks on his most recent interests at such meetings. In particular, he spoke about global population growth. He believed that the Earth’s population would grow for some more time, and then it will come to a standstill (at the level of roughly 10 billion). So he also wrote for our magazine, Svitohliad, which the National Academy of Sciences has been printing for five years now.
“Besides, Kapytsia had begun another very important cause: he started publishing the journal Scientific American in translation. In Ukraine, this journal was printed in Lviv under the name Svit nauky (The World of Science). Unfortunately, at present this translation project has stalled. Kapytsia, however, had masterminded its translation in Russia. This popular scientific journal continues to be printed there and has an important mission, as it allows the reader to keep up with the latest developments in science in the West and in Russia.”
