Science and Society

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa 1894-1984 – a great Soviet physicist, engineer, and experimenter, Nobel Prize laureate in physics, founder of the Institute of Physical Problems. P.L. Kapitsa combined the intuition and engineering instinct of a physicist-experimenter, pragmatism and a businesslike approach... as an organizer of science, and independence of judgment in communication with authorities. Preferring written discussion to oral, the scientist left us a vast legacy in the form of reports on various issues presented at scientific symposiums and conferences, speeches at meetings of scientists, notes to the authorities, and so on, some of which are published in this collection. It also includes "Maxims" - pithy statements from the scientist that have become aphorisms, and unusual physics problems invented by him.