Hug & Gesture

Soviet Russia does not coddle very many of its people, for example its railway workers of whom it has plenty, but it does coddle its topflight scientists, with whom it is not overburdened. Sedulously coddled is the only living Russian Nobel Prizewinner in the sciences, grouchy, bearded old Dr. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, who can bark with impunity that he does not like a government of "illiterate Communists." Lately another example of Russian scientist-coddling has seemed to certain Britons like the embrace of a selfish bear. But the British can take their science more calmly than the Russians, as they proved last week by a gentlemanly gesture to the man in the bear hug.

Some 14 years ago big-eyed, bushy-haired Peter Kapitza emerged from Leningrad's Polytechnical Institute, went to England's Cambridge, puttered with radioactivity. It occurred to him that he might learn much about the atom if he could wrench at it with tremendous magnetic forces. His first apparatus was a battery of accumulators short-circuiting through a wire coil, producing a momentary magnetic field of high power. Next he designed a huge dynamo to provide the short-circuiting power. With this the coils blew up. Kapitza stopped that by chilling the coils with liquid helium ( -270DEG C.). Finally he was able to produce magnetic fields of 320,000 gauss, five times as intense as any previously created.

British science was impressed. Kapitza was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, first alien to be thus honored in two centuries. To house his generator, helium liquefier and other equipment, an ornate new laboratory was built in the courtyard of Cavendish Laboratory, with steel and scarlet furniture in the director's office, separate rooms for the heavy apparatus, vibration-damping walls, an Eric Gill plaque of Lord Rutherford, boss of Cavendish Laboratory, in the entrance hall. Cost: $75,000. Happy Dr. Kapitza went in as director, started investigating the magnetic resistance of substances at low temperatures. At three degrees above Absolute Zero, he learned, the resistance of bismuth was increased 2,000 times. But much more important finds seemed to lie just ahead.

At that crucial point Dr. Kapitza went to his native land to attend a convention. When he started to return to England, the Soviet Government refused him permission to leave, explained bluntly that his services were needed at home. Peter Kapitza wailed that his work was in pure science, could not possibly push the Second Five-Year Plan. The high command, with an eye for prestige as well as services, was adamant. The Soviet Embassy in London issued a statement:

"Dr. Kapitza has been appointed director of the new Institute of Physical Research. . . . This institute was especially founded for him by the Soviet Government. Large sums were set aside for the building and its equipment under the directorship of Professor Kapitza. ... As far as his personal life is concerned he is comfortably situated and receiving adequate remuneration.''

Lord Rutherford was shocked. Reports reached him that Kapitza, despite the line things being done for him, was distressed to the point of losing his health. Meanwhile the laboratory at Cambridge from which so much was hoped lay idle. Snorted Lord Rutherford: "While nobody disputes that the Soviet has a legal claim upon Professor Kapitza's services, its sudden action in commandeering them without any previous warning has profoundly disturbed the University and the scientific world."

Heeding no pleas, the Russians talked and acted like Hollywood producers pampering a new star. They offered to buy the Cambridge equipment and additional apparatus as well, even to pay Cambridge for the loss of its time.

Last week Cambridge capitulated. The giant generator, coils and helium liquefier would be shipped to Professor Kapitza in his new institute as soon as possible. The price was not revealed, but it was announced that the money would be used at Cambridge, not to duplicate the Kapitza setup, but to buy atom-smashing equipment of the type used by the University of California's Ernest Orlando Lawrence.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.