Return of the Vanished

Return of the Vanished

Peter Kapitsa was once a big name in British science. The son of a czarist general, he arrived in Britain in 1921, broke but brilliant, and won a fellowship at Cambridge University. Soon he was astonishing his fellows with experiments in low temperatures and magnetic fields. Honors were showered on him, and Cambridge built him a special $75,000 laboratory for his work. Then in 1934 Kapitsa returned to Russia for a scientific convention, and Stalin refused to let him leave. Over the years, a few rumors about Kapitsa leaked out, putting him variously as head of Russia's atomic-bomb program, then as out of favor for refusing to work on the H-bomb, and finally, after Stalin's death, as director of the Soviet space program. Last week, to almost everyone's surprise, Kapitsa, now 71, stepped off a Soviet jetliner in London for a three-week visit to Britain.

Kapitsa behaved with the caution of a man who knew that he was being watched. He refused to clear up any of the mysteries of his past years, brushing off as "romantic" a reporter's question about his reaction to Stalin's stay order. He spoke guardedly about the Soviet space program, argued that the Soviets were still "a little ahead" of the U.S. At only one point did he unbend, offering his own formula for peace. It was, he said, "an international exchange of scientists from military institutions." "Then," added Kapitsa puckishly, "there would be no more secrets."

Kapitsa seemed only to want to kindle old memories. He returned to Cambridge, visited his old workshop in the Cavendish Laboratory, and dined with the dons at his old college, Trinity. Realizing that he had no academic gown, the required dress for evening meals in college, he asked a college servant to fetch one for him. The man brought back the very robe that Kapitsa had left behind 32 years ago.

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