At the age of 85, on August 14, 2012, Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa died. An outstanding scientist with a worldwide reputation, he was known to the general Russian public as the founder and permanent host of the popular program "Obvious-Incredible".
Sergei Kapitsa is a worthy successor to the famous dynasty of scientists. He is the son of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Pyotr Kapitsa. Grandson of the shipbuilder and mathematician Alexei Krylov, great-grandson of the famous Russian geographer Jerome Stebnitsky.
Sergei Kapitsa was born in Cambridge in 1928. The fact is that at this time his father was in England on a business trip. He worked there in the famous Rutherford laboratory. Interestingly, little Sergei was baptized, and the great Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, became his godfather. In 1935, the family returned to the USSR. There Sergei graduated from high school, then institute - MAI.
He began his scientific work in 1949. Studied physics of elementary particles, aerodynamics, electrodynamics. He taught physics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He defended himself at the age of 33, became a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences and a chief researcher at the Institute of Physical Problems.
Soon he became interested in the study of demography and the dynamics of the growth of the world's population. It was he who proved that the population of the Earth grew hyperbolically until 1 AD. Sergei Kapitsa was a member of the European Academy of Sciences, the Club of Rome, the World Academy of Arts and another 30 different scientific societies of the world. And he was never admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In our country, this outstanding scientist gained fame as the best popularizer of science. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal In the World of Science. Then he published the book "Life of Science", which briefly described the most fundamental works - from Copernicus to scientists of our time.
And finally, in 1973, he created the TV program "Obvious-Incredible". From the first release, she enjoyed the love of the audience and came out until the death of Sergei Petrovich. In this program, Kapitsa spoke in an accessible form about the achievements of science. In 2008 he was awarded TEFFI for his contribution to the development of Russian TV.
