Peter Kapitsa Nobel Prize. Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa - biography, information, personal life

Kapitsa Pyotr Leonidovich (1894-1984), physicist, one of the founders of low temperature physics and the physics of strong magnetic fields.

Born on July 8, 1894 in Kronstadt in the family of a military engineer. He graduated from high school, then from real school. He was interested in physics and electrical engineering, and showed a special passion for clock construction. In 1912 he entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, but in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, he went to the front.

After demobilization, he returned to the institute and worked in the laboratory of A.F. Ioffe. The first scientific work (dedicated to the production of thin quartz threads) was published in 1916 in the Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society. After graduating from the institute, Kapitsa became a teacher at the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics, then an employee of the Physics Institute created in Petrograd, which was headed by Ioffe.

In 1921, Kapitsa was sent to England - he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, headed by E. Rutherford. The Russian physicist quickly made a brilliant career - he became director of the Mond Laboratory at the Royal Scientific Society. His works of the 20s. XX century devoted to nuclear physics, physics and technology of superstrong magnetic fields, physics and technology of low temperatures, high-power electronics, physics of high-temperature plasma.

In 1934, Kapitsa returned to Russia. In Moscow, he founded the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the post of director of which he took over in 1935. At the same time, Kapitsa became a professor at Moscow State University (1936-1947). In 1939, the scientist was elected academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and since 1957 he was a member of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Along with organizing the scientific process, Kapitsa was constantly engaged in research work. Together with N.N. Semenov, he proposed a method for determining the magnetic moment of an atom. Kapitsa was the first in the history of science to place a cloud chamber in a strong magnetic field and observe the curvature of the trajectory of alpha particles. He established the law of linear increase in the electrical resistance of a number of metals depending on the magnetic field strength (Kapitsa's law). He created new methods for liquefying hydrogen and helium; A method has been developed for liquefying air using a turboexpander.

Kapitsa developed the general theory of magnetron-type electronic devices and obtained continuous generators - the planotron and nigotron.

In 1959, he experimentally discovered the formation of high-temperature plasma in a high-frequency discharge and proposed a design for a thermonuclear reactor. The scientist’s merits were highly appreciated by the Soviet and world scientific community.

Kapitsa twice became a Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1974) and twice - laureate of the USSR State Prize (1941, 1943).

In 1978 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Soviet physicist Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born in the Kronstadt naval fortress, located on an island in the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg, where his father Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa, lieutenant general of the engineering corps, served. K.'s mother Olga Ieronimovna Kapitsa (Stebnitskaya) was a famous teacher and collector of folklore. After graduating from the gymnasium in Kronstadt, K. entered the faculty of electrical engineers at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, from which he graduated in 1918. For the next three years he taught at the same institute. Under the leadership of A.F. Ioffe, who was the first in Russia to begin research in the field of atomic physics, K., together with his classmate Nikolai Semenov, developed a method for measuring the magnetic moment of an atom in a non-uniform magnetic field, which was improved in 1921 by Otto Stern.

K.'s student years and the beginning of his teaching work coincided with the October Revolution and the Civil War. It was a time of disaster, famine and epidemics. During one of these epidemics, K.’s young wife, Nadezhda Chernosvitova, whom they married in 1916, and their two young children died. Joffe insisted that K. needed to go abroad, but the revolutionary government did not give permission for this until Maxim Gorky, the most influential Russian writer at that time, intervened in the matter. In 1921, K. was allowed to travel to England, where he became an employee of Ernest Rutherford, who worked at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. K. quickly gained Rutherford's respect and became his friend.

The first studies carried out by K. in Cambridge were devoted to the deflection of alpha and beta particles emitted by radioactive nuclei in a magnetic field. Experiments pushed him to create powerful electromagnets. By discharging an electric battery through a small coil of copper wire (a short circuit occurred), K. managed to obtain magnetic fields that were 6-7 times greater than all previous ones. The discharge did not lead to overheating or mechanical destruction of the device, because its duration was only about 0.01 seconds.

The creation of unique equipment for measuring temperature effects associated with the influence of strong magnetic fields on the properties of matter, for example, magnetic resistance, led K. to study the problems of low temperature physics. To reach such temperatures, it was necessary to have a large amount of liquefied gases. Developing fundamentally new refrigeration machines and installations, K. used all his remarkable talent as a physicist and engineer. The pinnacle of his creativity in this area was the creation in 1934 of an unusually productive installation for liquefying helium, which boils (transforms from a liquid to a gaseous state) or liquefies (transforms from a gaseous to a liquid state) at a temperature of about 4.3 K. Liquefaction of this gas was considered the most difficult. Liquid helium was first obtained in 1908 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kammerlingh-Onnes. But K.’s installation was capable of producing 2 liters of liquid helium per hour, whereas according to the Kammerling-Onnes method, it took several days to obtain a small amount of it with impurities. In K.'s installation, helium undergoes rapid expansion and cools before the heat of the environment has time to warm it; the expanded helium then enters the machine for further processing. K. also managed to overcome the problem of freezing of the lubricant of moving parts at low temperatures by using liquid helium itself for these purposes.

At Cambridge, K.'s scientific authority grew rapidly. He successfully moved up the levels of the academic hierarchy. In 1923, K. became a doctor of science and received the prestigious James Clerk Maxwell Fellowship. In 1924 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Cavendish Laboratory for Magnetic Research, and in 1925 he became a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1928, the USSR Academy of Sciences awarded K. the academic degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and in 1929 elected him as its corresponding member. The following year, K. becomes a research professor at the Royal Society of London. At the insistence of Rutherford, the Royal Society is building a new laboratory especially for K. It was named the Mond Laboratory in honor of the chemist and industrialist of German origin, Ludwig Mond, with whose funds, left in his will to the Royal Society of London, it was built. The opening of the laboratory took place in 1934. K. became its first director. But he was destined to work there for only one year.

The relationship between K. and the Soviet government has always been rather mysterious and incomprehensible. During his thirteen-year stay in England, K. returned several times to the Soviet Union with his second wife, née Anna Alekseevna Krylova, to give lectures, visit his mother and spend the holidays at some Russian resort. Soviet officials repeatedly approached him with a request to remain permanently in the USSR. K. was interested in such proposals, but set certain conditions, in particular freedom of travel to the West, which is why the resolution of the issue was postponed. At the end of the summer of 1934, K. and his wife once again came to the Soviet Union, but when the couple prepared to return to England, it turned out that their exit visas had been cancelled. After a furious but futile skirmish with officials in Moscow, K. was forced to remain in his homeland, and his wife was allowed to return to England to be with their children. Somewhat later, Anna Alekseevna joined her husband in Moscow, and the children came after her. Rutherford and other friends of K. appealed to the Soviet government with a request to allow him to leave to continue work in England, but in vain.

In 1935, K. was offered to become director of the newly created Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, but before giving consent, K. refused the proposed post for almost a year. Rutherford, resigned to the loss of his outstanding collaborator, allowed the Soviet authorities to buy the equipment from Mond's laboratory and ship it by sea to the USSR. Negotiations, transportation of equipment and its installation at the Institute of Physical Problems took several years.

K. resumed his research on low temperature physics, including the properties of liquid helium. He designed installations for liquefying other gases. In 1938, K. improved a small turbine that liquefied air very effectively. He was able to discover an extraordinary decrease in the viscosity of liquid helium when cooled to a temperature below 2.17 K, at which it transforms into a form called helium-2. The loss of viscosity allows it to flow freely through the smallest holes and even climb up the walls of the container, as if “not feeling” the action of gravity. The lack of viscosity is also accompanied by an increase in thermal conductivity. K. called the new phenomenon he discovered superfluidity.

Two of K.'s former colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory, J.F. Allen A.D. Misener performed similar studies. All three published papers presenting their findings in the same issue of the British journal Nature. K.'s 1938 paper and two other papers published in 1942 are among his most important works on low-temperature physics. K., who had an unusually high authority, boldly defended his views even during the purges carried out by Stalin in the late 30s. When Lev Landau, an employee of the Institute of Physical Problems, was arrested in 1938 on charges of spying for Nazi Germany, K. achieved his release. To do this, he had to go to the Kremlin and threaten to resign from his post as director of the institute if he refused.

In his reports to government commissioners, K. openly criticized those decisions that he considered incorrect. Little is known about K.'s activities during the Second World War in the West. In October 1941, he attracted public attention by warning about the possibility of creating an atomic bomb. He may have been the first physicist to make such a statement. Subsequently, K. denied his participation in the work on creating both atomic and hydrogen bombs. There is quite convincing data to support his claims. It is unclear, however, whether his refusal was motivated by moral considerations or by a difference of opinion regarding the extent to which the proposed part of the project was consistent with the traditions and capabilities of the Institute of Physical Problems.

It is known that in 1945, when the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and work on creating nuclear weapons began with even greater energy in the Soviet Union, K. was removed from his post as director of the institute and was under house arrest for eight years. He was deprived of the opportunity to communicate with his colleagues from other research institutes. He set up a small laboratory at his dacha and continued to do research. Two years after Stalin's death, in 1955, he was reinstated as director of the Institute of Physical Problems and remained in this position until the end of his life.

K.'s post-war scientific works covered a wide variety of areas of physics, including the hydrodynamics of thin layers of liquid and the nature of ball lightning, but his main interests focused on microwave generators and the study of various properties of plasma. Plasma is generally understood as gases heated to such a high temperature that their atoms lose electrons and become charged ions. Unlike neutral atoms and molecules of an ordinary gas, ions are subject to large electric forces created by other ions, as well as electric and magnetic fields created by any external source. This is why plasma is sometimes considered a special form of matter. Plasma is used in fusion reactors operating at very high temperatures. In the 50s, while working on the creation of a microwave generator, K. discovered that high-intensity microwaves generate a clearly observable luminous discharge in helium. Measuring the temperature at the center of the helium discharge, he found that at a distance of several millimeters from the discharge boundary, the temperature changes by approximately 2,000,000K. This discovery formed the basis for the design of a thermonuclear reactor with continuous plasma heating. It is possible that such a reactor will be simpler and cheaper than pulsed fusion reactors used in other fusion experiments.

In addition to his achievements in experimental physics, K. proved himself to be a brilliant administrator and educator. Under his leadership, the Institute of Physical Problems became one of the most productive and prestigious institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences, attracting many of the country's leading physicists. K. took part in the creation of a research center near Novosibirsk - Akademgorodok, and a new type of higher education institution - the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Installations for liquefying gases built by K. have found wide application in industry. The use of oxygen extracted from liquid air for oxygen blasting produced a genuine revolution in the Soviet steel industry.

In his old age, K., who was never a member of the Communist Party, used all his authority to criticize the tendency in the Soviet Union to make judgments on scientific issues based on non-scientific grounds. He opposed the construction of a pulp and paper mill, which threatened to pollute Lake Baikal with its wastewater; condemned the measures taken by the CPSU in the mid-60s. an attempt to rehabilitate Stalin and, together with Andrei Sakharov and other representatives of the intelligentsia, signed a letter protesting the forced imprisonment of biologist Zhores Medvedev in a psychiatric hospital. K. was a member of the Soviet Committee of the Pugwash Movement for Peace and Disarmament. He also made several proposals on ways to overcome the alienation between Soviet and American sciences.

In 1965, for the first time after a break of more than thirty years, K. received permission to leave the Soviet Union for Denmark to receive the International Niels Bohr Gold Medal, awarded by the Danish Society of Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. There he visited scientific laboratories and gave a lecture on high-energy physics. In 1966, K. again visited England, in his old laboratories, and shared his memories of Rutherford in a speech he gave to members of the Royal Society of London. In 1969, K. and his wife made their first trip to the United States.

K. was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 “for fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low-temperature physics.” He shared his award with Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson. Introducing the laureates, Lameck Hultén of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences remarked: “K. stands before us as one of the greatest experimentalists of our time, an undeniable pioneer, leader and master in his field."

In 1927, during his stay in England, K. married a second time. His wife was Anna Alekseevna Krylova, the daughter of the famous shipbuilder, mechanic and mathematician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov, who, on behalf of the government, was sent to England to oversee the construction of ships commissioned by Soviet Russia. The Kapitsa couple had two sons. Both of them later became scientists. In his youth, while in Cambridge, K. drove a motorcycle, smoked a pipe and wore tweed suits. He retained his English habits throughout his life. In Moscow, next to the Institute of Physical Problems, a cottage in the English style was built for him. He ordered clothes and tobacco from England. In his spare time, K. liked to play chess and repair antique watches. He died on April 8, 1984.

K. was awarded many awards and honorary titles both in his homeland and in many countries around the world. He was an honorary doctorate from eleven universities on four continents, a member of many scientific societies, the academy of the United States of America, the Soviet Union and most European countries, and was the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his scientific and political activities, including seven Orders of Lenin.

Nobel Prize laureates: Encyclopedia: Trans. from English – M.: Progress, 1992.
© The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
© Translation into Russian with additions, Progress Publishing House, 1992.

“Kapitsa once told,” recalled the historian of science F. Kedrov, “how he once dined at Trinity College with his old colleague Lord Adrian and other scientists. Everything in college remained the same as it had been over 30 years ago. On the walls hung paintings that were well known to Pyotr Leonidovich - a portrait of Henry VIII and “The Boy in Blue” by Reynolds. And yet Kapitsa felt some kind of awkwardness. And suddenly it dawned on him: everyone around him was wearing doctor’s robes, and he was the only one without a robe. He remembered that he had once left his doctor's robe on a hook in the hallway of Trinity College. Calling the butler (waiter), Pyotr Leonidovich told him: “I left my doctor’s robe in the hallway. Would you look for it there?” Butler politely asked: “When did you leave it in the hallway, sir?” Kapitsa replied: “Thirty-three years ago.” Butler did not express any surprise: “Yes, sir, of course, I’ll take a look.”

And just imagine, Kapitsa laughed, he found my robe.”

Kapitsa's scientific merits were highly appreciated.

He is a Nobel laureate in 1978, twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1974), twice State Prize laureate (1941, 1943). He was awarded six Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Lomonosov Gold Medal, Faraday, Franklin, Bohr, and Rutherford medals.

He died in 1984, just short of his ninetieth birthday.

And in Rutherford’s laboratory, and in the office of the Institute of Physical Problems, and in the “home laboratory” on Nikolina Gora, Kapitsa was always in place.

Moreover, his place was always the best.

Despite the fact that the phrase “universal scientist” is fraught with a certain degree of mistrust, it includes such an important human quality as breadth of interests. Such a “universal” scientist was Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa.

The ladder of life... If we allow such a metaphor, then all life is climbing the rungs of this ladder. It’s good when a person sees a goal somewhere above, or, if you like, the meaning of life. Then the transition to each new level is logical and painless. Even when he breaks down and falls, a person does not lose himself, he rises and moves further upward.

The life ladder of Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Nobel laureate in physics, is quite long - almost 90 years. And this despite the blows and hardships of fate. A clear goal, which is to serve science, is the main life guideline of a scientist.

The first step is childhood

Many consider Peter Kapitsa their contemporary. Therefore, the date of his birth sounds strange: July 8, 1894. It was at the end of the century before last that the future academician was born into the family of the Russian general Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa. Peter's parents were considered the most intelligent people of their time. Father is a talented military engineer. The scientist’s mother Olga Ieronimovna, nee Stebnitskaya, was a teacher, public figure, and philologist.

Pyotr Kapitsa had a completely cloudless childhood. True, one small fly in the ointment did happen: after a year of study, Peter was expelled from the Kronstadt gymnasium due to poor performance in Latin. In 1906, he entered a real school, which 6 years later he graduated with flying colors. And this is not surprising. At the school, the boy had the opportunity to do what he loved: he repaired instruments, conducted experiments in chemistry and physics. The doors of the school's laboratories were constantly open for gifted students. He showed a special interest in watches: he loved to assemble and disassemble them. This later became the scientist’s life hobby.

Young Peter traveled a lot with his relatives. Italy and Greece, Germany and Switzerland, the Russian North and Scotland - this is an incomplete list of places visited by Kapitsa. New impressions and meetings with interesting people undoubtedly contributed to the development of Peter’s horizons.

Thanks to his family, Kapitsa became a comprehensively developed person. He loved literature, art, theater. He was interested in international problems. He valued smart, erudite people, bright individuals with original thinking.

The second step is studenthood

When the future scientist turned 18, he entered the Polytechnic Institute of St. Petersburg, Faculty of Electromechanics, without any problems. But just two years later, fate brought the first test: third-year student Pyotr Kapitsa was drafted into the army. The year was 1914. In the army, Peter served as an ambulance driver. And only two years later he returned to the student’s bench.

The first significant meeting in Kapitsa’s life took place at the institute. A.F. took the talented student under his “wing.” Ioffe, who is called the “father of Soviet physics.” At this time, Ioffe headed the physics laboratory. Peter conducted his experiments in it. In addition, Kapitsa participated in physics seminars conducted by his teacher.

In 1916, a significant event occurred in the life of Pyotr Kapitsa - he got married. The student’s wife was Nadenka Chernosvitova, the daughter of a State Duma deputy who, by the way, was shot three years later. The young couple had two children.

It was a troubled time. The revolution and the post-revolutionary state of the economy did not contribute to the development of science. The laboratory lacked the most necessary equipment and materials. However, the scientists did their work fanatically. Even before receiving his diploma, Peter Kapitsa was offered teaching work at the same institute. And in 1919 he successfully completed the course of study. The transition to the next stage of life has taken place.

Third step - foreign fame

This life milestone began with a dark streak: Peter suddenly lost his entire family. In 1919, a terrible influenza virus, playfully called the “Spanish flu,” raged. He took many lives. Among the victims of the “Spanish flu” are Kapitsa’s wife and two children. Science is the savior from severe depression. Peter left for England on the recommendation of his teacher Joffe. Here he got a job in the famous Rutherford Physics Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The master's respect had to be earned. Kapitsa went from rejection by the famous physicist to a touching friendship with him.

At the same university, Peter defended his doctoral dissertation, which described experiments on studying the pulses of alpha particles. Actually, at this time all of Rutherford’s students were studying his “favorite” particles. But Kapitsa's interest turned to another area: solid state physics.

As the young scientist's prestige in university circles increased with incredible speed, his movement up the steps of academic growth was just as rapid. Here are just some of the stages of this movement:

• 1923 – received a Doctor of Science degree and a prestigious Maxwell Fellowship;
• 1924 – appointment to the position of deputy director of the laboratory for magnetic field research;
• 1925 – entry into Trinity College;
• 1929 – election in absentia as a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences;
• 1933 – received the title of Professor of the Royal Society of London.

At Rutherford's insistence, a new laboratory was created, headed by a talented student. This laboratory used sophisticated installations that made it possible to study physical objects under ultra-low temperatures. The scientist used his abilities as an engineer and physicist to develop unique refrigeration equipment. In 1934, Kapitsa managed to create a helium liquefaction plant. This was a real breakthrough in physics.

While working at Cambridge in 1927, Pyotr Kapitsa married again. His second wife was Anna, the daughter of Academician Krylov. This marriage produced two sons - Andrei and Sergei, who later became scientists.

The fourth step is returning home

Pyotr Kapitsa lived in England for about 13 years. This considerable period of life, naturally, left its mark on the character, habits, and views of the scientist. Until the end of his days he looked like a gentleman of Foggy Albion. His tweed suits were impeccable, and he smoked his pipe only with English tobacco. Even the house that was subsequently built near Moscow was in the English style.

During his stay in London, Kapitsa and his family visited his Russian relatives. Along the way, he read lectures and vacationed at Soviet resorts. Of course, he received offers to return more than once, but he always refrained from direct consent, since the government did not guarantee freedom of movement.

However, the scientist underestimated his compatriots. During one of his and his wife’s visits to their homeland, the country’s leadership simply canceled their exit visas. Anna was nevertheless allowed to return to her children, but Pyotr Kapitsa remained in Moscow. Later his family joined him. No requests from the scientist himself or even Rutherford for permission to travel to England to continue his work helped. One of the arguments in favor of the government's actions: Kapitsa worked for British industry, including the military.

The professor was offered to head the Institute of Physical Problems. However, the scientist was still shocked by what happened for a long time. He even had thoughts of quitting physical research and moving into biophysics - becoming Pavlov’s assistant. But, as they say, time is the best doctor. Kapitsa accepted the offer, but in response put forward his own ultimatum: to transport all his equipment from the English laboratory. Fortunately, Rutherford did not interfere with this, and the conditions were created for the continuation of research. The only thing that oppressed the scientist was bureaucracy. Resolving any issue required time and nerves.

At the end of the 30s, Kapitsa continued to work on the problem of superfluidity of liquid helium. By the way, he was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize for his discoveries in this area. In January 1939, Pyotr Kapitsa became a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

The unquestioned authority of Pyotr Leonidovich saved many scientists from Stalinist repressions in the pre-war years. He boldly defended his views and threatened to resign as head of the institute if the government disagreed with him.

During the war, Kapitsa worked on the implementation of a plant for producing liquid oxygen, which was very important at that time.

In the post-war years, Academician Kapitsa continued research in the field of ultra-low temperature physics. However, the scientist’s indomitable temper became the reason for the disfavor of the country’s leadership: he himself became a victim of repression. Pyotr Leonidovich was removed from his post as director of the Institute of Physical Problems and put under house arrest. Only after the death of Joseph Stalin was he able to fully continue his research.

The fifth step is the last

From the beginning of the 50s until the last days of his life, Academician Kapitsa was engaged in research in various fields of physics. Interestingly, he moved from ultra-low temperatures to studying the properties of plasma. Based on his developments, a project for a thermonuclear reactor with continuous plasma heating was created. In his response speech on the occasion of the Nobel Prize in 1978 for discoveries in the field of ultra-low temperatures, Kapitsa noted the loss of his interest in this topic. Such is the vast range of scientific views of the brilliant scientist: from absolute zero to ultra-high temperatures. By the way, according to Pyotr Leonidovich’s son Sergei Kapitsa, his father kept the entire prize for himself, without sharing it with the state, as was customary. The wound inflicted on the scientist by the Soviet government never healed.

Academician Pyotr Kapitsa worked until his last days. On March 22, 1984, he died of a stroke without regaining consciousness.

Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa

Kapitsa Petr Leonidovich (1894-1984), Russian physicist, one of the founders of low temperature physics and the physics of strong magnetic fields, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1974). In 1921-34 on a scientific trip to Great Britain. Organizer and first director (1935-46 and since 1955) of the Institute of Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Discovered the superfluidity of liquid helium (1938). He developed a method for liquefying air using a turboexpander, a new type of powerful ultra-high-frequency generator. He discovered that a high-frequency discharge in dense gases produces a stable plasma cord with an electron temperature of 105-106 K. USSR State Prize (1941, 1943), Nobel Prize (1978). Gold medal named after Lomonosov of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1959).

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa was born on July 9, 1894 in Kronstadt in the family of a military engineer, General Leonid Petrovich Kapitsa, builder of the Kronstadt fortifications. Peter first studied for a year at the gymnasium, and then at the Kronstadt real school.

In 1912, Kapitsa entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. In the same year, Kapitsa's first article appeared in the Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society.

In 1918, Ioffe founded one of the first Russian physics research institutes in Petrograd. Having graduated from the Polytechnic Institute that same year, Peter was retained there as a teacher in the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics.