Letters from Kapitza to his mother, 1921-27

Peter Kapitza (1894—1984) came to England as a member of a Soviet mission sent to renew scientific relations with the West after the upheavals of World War I, the Revolution and the Civil War. He had recently suffered the tragic loss of his wife, their two young children and his father in the epidemics that raged in the Soviet Union at that time. It was partly to distract him from his grief that he was invited to join the mission, and A. F. Joffé, who had been his chief at the Physico-Technical Institute in Petrograd, thought it would be a good thing for him to get some first-hand experience of the latest research techniques by spending the winter in a leading physics laboratory in the West. Eventually, Rutherford agreed to have him in the Cavendish and Kapitza made such an impression by his originality and experimental skill that he was encouraged to extend his stay.