Abstract
DR. PETER KAPITZA, director of the Institute for Physical Problems of the Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R., has been awarded the Faraday Medal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, “for his notable contributions to science in the generation and utilization of intense magnetic fields”. Dr. Kapitza began his scientific career some twenty years ago in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, where he succeeded in producing magnetic fields much stronger than had hitherto been obtainable. To avoid the difficulty of the heating up of the coil in which the magnetic field was produced, he used a large power for a very short time only; the time was, however, long enough for most magnetic effects to establish themselves, and Kapitza developed many ingenious devices for studying the magnetic properties of matter in such transient fields. With this powerful technique he cleared up various doubtful points about magnetization at high fields and was able to measure the magnetostriction of diamagnetic substances for the first time ; a series of researches on the change of electrical resistance of metals in the new region he had opened up also brought to light many interesting new features.
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Dr. Peter Kapitza, F. R. S.: Faraday Medallist. Nature 149, 241 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149241b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149241b0