Kapitsa received his preparatory education in Kronstadt and then enrolled at the Polytechnic Institute of Petrograd. He married Nadeshda Tschernosvitova in 1916 and graduated in 1918 with a degree in electrical engineering. He became a lecturer at the institute, while developing a method of measuring
magnetism with another student, Nikolai N. Semenov (who would one day win the Nobel Prize in chemistry). Their groundbreaking work was refined by
Otto Stern in 1921, who himself won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1943.
Leaves Russia to Study in England
Kapitsa's research on magnetism at the Polytechnic Institute occurred in the midst of the collapse of czarist Russia and the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution. The country suffered widespread famine as a result of the civil unrest, and both his wife and their young child died. Kapitsa was repeatedly urged to study abroad, but his requests to do so were consistently refused by the new Communist government. Maxim Gorky, the Russian writer, interceded on his behalf, and in 1921 Kapitsa was allowed to leave for England where he worked with Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory.
Rutherford initially balked at accepting Kapitsa, claiming that he had no room for another student.
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