RUSSIAN SCIENTIST
KAPITSA, by A. M. Biew, translated trom the German by James Cleugh; Frederick Muller, 18/-. J APITSA is a Russian trained in electrical engineering who in 1921 escaped to England, joined Rutherford’s group of bright young men, and from 1934 was Director of an important section of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1934 he attended a congress in Soviet Russia, was won over apparently by Stalin himself, and from 1937 was the leading physicist of the Supreme Atomic Energy Commission of the Soviet Union. The author, evidently a deserter from the Russian Secret Police, does not give his authority for his sources of informae tion; one is left to infer from what is generally known about conditions in Russia that his story could be substantially correct. Accepting this we have an extraordinary record of the vast resources and organisation concentrated on nuclear research, of successful Russian espionage in various centres of Western atomic research, and of the intricate tactics by which Russia suc. ceeded in misleading the world about the progress being made. It appears that in the interests of science and humanity Kapitsa made an attempt in 1946 to arrange an exchange of data with foreign scientists. His move was discovered; he was at once "retired," but not liquidated; he was reinstated in 1949 as one regarded as essential to progress in the research on the H-bomb, which culminated in suc-
cess in 1953. x
L.J.
W.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 14
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239RUSSIAN SCIENTIST New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 14
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