WITHOUT FRONTIERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1936, Page 6

WITHOUT FRONTIERS

SCIENCE, RUSSIA, AND THE ATOM

; Soviet Russia is eager to- have itt place in the atom.. Last spring it detained Dr. Peter Kapitza to explore the unknown country; says the "Children's Newspaper." Kapitza was one of the able scientists. who • sought a home at Cambridge at a time when Russia, like France in her revolutionary era, had no use for scientific men. The university soon found him work to do among the band of young men trying to find what the atom is and how its wheels go round.

The Russian did his part of the inquiry to the admiration ,pf all. He worked with liquid hdlium.,and. with, electric voltages comparable,with the lightning discharge. Under:the, combined influence of excessively low temperatures and tremendously powerful magnetic fields the atom discloses new aspects of its mechanism.

The results were most promising when Kapitza went back to Russia for a holiday. But the Soviet thought so highly of him that they forbade his return to Cambridge.; Cambridge complained at the lossi of its student, but Russia turned deaf ears,, and declared that Kapitza must work at home. \ laboratory would be, built fpr Jiixa. There was nothing :t6 be' dor>» «*> cept make the best of it. jstussia has follo'»edup her capture' of the student by-asicing to buy the very valuable apparatus with which he- worked at Cambridge. The university,,>thihking that it does not matter .where the work takes place so long, as it-is done, has, consented. Kapitza will pry into the atom in Moscov»,, though the work: at Cambridge has moved.a step forward since he left. •' ; • It is a noteworthy illustration of thai saying that science knows no frontiers.