Editing Pyotr Kapitsa (section)

== Personal life ==
Pyotr Kapitsa had the nickname "Centaurus". This arose when once [[Artem Alikhanian]] asked Kapitsas' student [[:ru:Шальников, Александр Иосифович|Shalnikov]] "is your supervisor a human or a beast?" to which Shalnikov responded that he is a Centaurus, i.e. he can be human but also he can get angry and hit you with hooves like a horse.<ref name="Drobantseva_Luria"> Kora Drobantseva's memoirs, "The way we lived"; Академик Ландау: как мы жили: воспоминания Москва 2011 [https://books.google.com/books?id=kucVCgAAQBAJ]</ref> Kapitsa was married in 1927 to Anna Alekseyevna Krylova (1903-1996), daughter of applied mathematician [[Aleksey Krylov]]. They had two sons, Sergey and Andrey. [[Sergey Kapitsa]] (1928–2012) was a physicist and demographer.  Kapitsa was also the host of the popular and long-running Russian scientific TV show ''Evident, but Incredible''.<ref>{{cite web |title=Kalinga Prize Laureates |url=http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/science-technology/sti-policy/global-focus/science-popularization/science-popularization/kalinga-winners/ |publisher=[[United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization]] |access-date=17 March 2011}}</ref> [[Andrey Kapitsa]] (1931–2011) was a geographer. He was credited with the discovery and naming of [[Lake Vostok]], the largest [[subglacial lake]] in [[Antarctica]], which lies 4,000 meters below the continent's [[ice cap]].<ref name=rgs>{{cite news|title=Andrey Kapitsa dies in Moscow |url=http://int.rgo.ru/news/andrey-kapitsa-dies-in-moscow/ |work=[[Russian Geographical Society]] |date=3 August 2011 |access-date=4 August 2011}}</ref>

Kapitsa had the ear of people high up in the Soviet government, due to the usefulness to industry of his discoveries, regularly writing letters on matters of science policy. In particular, he saved both [[Vladimir Fock]] and [[Lev Landau]] from [[Great Purge|Stalin's purges]] of the 1930s, telling [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] that Landau was the only one who would be able to solve an important physics puzzle of the time.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=The Top-Secret Life of Lev Landau |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-top-secret-life-of-lev-landau/ |access-date=2022-04-30 |journal=Scientific American |year=1997 |language=en |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0897-72|last1=Gorelik |first1=Gennady |volume=277 |issue=2 |pages=72–77 |bibcode=1997SciAm.277b..72G |url-access=subscription }}</ref>
 
Kapitsa died on 8 April 1984 in [[Moscow]] at the age 89.