Obituary of Sergei Kapitsa (1928-2012)

Professor Serguei P. Kapitza died August 14, 2012 in Moscow at the age of 84. As a well-known scientist, popularizer of science, and author of many TV and editorial projects he was closely involved not in the major questions at the heart of science, but how science and society interact.

Born in Cambridge, England, Kapitsa graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1949. He was Senior Research Fellow at the Lebedev Physical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences and Professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. His father was the physicist and Nobel laureate Peter Kapitza.

Kapitsa’s contributions to physics were in the areas of applied electrodynamics and accelerator physics; he is known, in particular, for his work on the microtron, a device for producing electron beams. In later years, his research focus was on historical demography, where he developed a number of mathematical models modeling population growth and the how society would change with changing demographics. His activities in science popularization included hosting the Russian Television program, Evident, but Incredible, starting in 1973, for which he was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in 1979 and the USSR State Prize in 1980. He holds the record for being the longest serving host of a TV program. In 1982 he founded and edited the Russian edition of Scientific American.

Like his father, he was a long term participant in the Pugwash conferences of Science and World Affairs movement and the Club of Rome, eventually serving on the main governing board of Pugwash between 1987-1997, and on the Russian Pugwash Committee until the day he died. He was one of chief organizer of 38th Pugwash Conference in Dagomys, USSR, 1988, when travel between the Soviet Union and the West were still relatively restricted. Kapitza also was co-editor of Verification: Monitoring Disarmament.

In the 1980s he, along with Carl Sagan, was outspoken about the possibility that international nuclear war would bring about a nuclear winter, making presentations in the US Senate in 1983 and the United Nations in 1985. He was an advocate of planetary exploration and served on the advisory council of the Planetary Society.

In 2012, Kapitsa was awarded the first gold medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for outstanding achievements in the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

Kapitsa was a pioneer of scuba diving in the Soviet Union, he shot the first underwater film about the Sea of Japan. He also was an excellent chess player. For many years Sergey Kapitza was Head of Chair in the Moscow Physical and Technical Institute, and concurrently was director of laboratory in Peter Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems of the USSR/Russian Academy of Science.

Kapitsa was vice president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Russia and president of the Eurasian Physical Society, and was a strong proponent of restoring support for science in Russia.