Who hosted the program is obviously incredible. Sergei Kapitsa: Our television is depriving the country of reason Legendary host of the “Obvious-Incredible” program Sergei Kapitsa for Evening

– The number of universities is growing, but the quality of education on average is falling. We have many so-called universities that are not really universities at all. Some pedagogical institute, which deserves rather the status of a school, suddenly calls itself a university. After the war, three high-level institutions were created - MIPT, MEPhI and MGIMO. They responded to the needs of the time. Now I don’t see any new educational institutions that would meet the new needs of the country - with the exception of the Higher School of Economics.

Just to list all the achievements, titles and regalia of Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, member of the European Academy, President of the Eurasian Physical Society Sergei Kapitsa, will require several pages. But most TV viewers know him as the host of a program with more than 30 years of history - “Obvious-Incredible”, the fate of which is very difficult. Since it does not fit into the context of today’s TV, the program wanders from channel to channel: now “Obvious-Incredible” is broadcast on the Rossiya TV channel.

The public is stupid, but not that much
– Sergei Petrovich, about a year and a half ago, your program was once again closed: the channel’s management motivated this by the fact that Sergei Kapitsa chooses topics that are interesting only to him.
– It seems to me that this is a rather primitive point of view; after all, quite a large number of spectators watched and are watching us. And a few years before that, “Obvious - Incredible” was closed on another channel, since the then television management gave way to all sorts of witches and sorcerers. They also began to demand mysticism from me, stories about so-called paranormal phenomena. But a fairy tale, a legend, is a certain stage of development, like the childhood of science, since ancient man called something a miracle that he could not explain. A child needs fairy tales, but it seems to me that many adults have never left childhood. We ourselves have brought society to this state. Why this is so, we must ask television executives. Television is mainly subordinated to the basest interests. A striking example is the programs “Dom” and “Dom-2”. Interest in such shows and their high ratings characterize the collapse of society's consciousness. They say that if you want to deprive a person of the opportunity to exist, you must deprive him of his mind. Likewise, our television is depriving the country of reason.

– Maybe the fact is that the audience itself is more interested in mysticism, riddles and secrets than real science?
- I don’t agree. The public is a fool, as Stanislavsky said, but not to the same extent. She, of course, was accustomed to complete idiocy, so ask not me, but the television executives.

– Sometimes it seems that the state has turned its back on science.
– It’s difficult to answer unequivocally; this is a very difficult set of problems. We had already passed through a deep hole and now began to slowly climb up. But the situation is still very serious, and the most significant crisis we are experiencing is related to the lack of young people capable of taking leadership positions in science. A young man who has received a higher education from us, a PhD, is almost never able to realize his talent in the country, so he either goes into business or goes to the West. My grandson graduated from the Faculty of Cybernetics of Moscow State University, his diploma was the third in the course. He was offered to continue his studies in graduate school and was awarded a scholarship of one and a half thousand rubles. What should he do now? How can he feed his family with that kind of money? By the way, my friend’s grandson, who had just graduated from the Chemistry Department of Moscow State University, was offered a $1,500 graduate student scholarship at Columbia University in New York. Lenin at one time kicked out 100 philosophers who did not suit him, and we, in fact, kicked out tens of thousands of mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and biologists who were very necessary for society. Yuri Luzhkov and Viktor Sadovnichy (Rector of Moscow State University - A.S.) managed to promote a project that would double the area of ​​Moscow University. On the one hand, this is good, but it is much more difficult to answer the question, who will teach there?

Stalin ordered his father to work here
– Maybe this is a matter of some kind of systemic crisis, since science in Soviet times was “sharpened” to serve the military-industrial complex, which is now not in demand on the same scale as before.
– No, not all science was related to the military-industrial complex. For example, only half of the Physics and Technology graduates worked in the defense industry. Such simplistic estimates are now often made, but they are usually incorrect. For example, only half of the aviation industry was military, and the other half was civilian. Now there is practically no civilian life. Over the past 15 years, we have produced 35 civil aircraft, previously we produced 300 per year.

– How to get out of this vicious circle?
– This is a question of political strategy. We have various national programs that mobilize funds, public attention, and give political impetus. But the only area in which there is no such program yet is science. And without science the country has no future.

– But scientific discoveries are now being made in Russia too. Last spring, mathematician Grigory Perelman proved the famous Poincaré conjecture, and then refused the most prestigious prize in the field of mathematics - the Fields medal.
– This is more of a private episode. And it did not arise out of nowhere, but because there was such a wonderful mathematical environment in St. Petersburg and Moscow, from which scientists of this level grew. I believe that, first of all, it is necessary to give young scientists the opportunity to settle in Russia. When my father came to Russia from Cambridge for a while in 1934, Stalin said: “You now need to work here.” And my father was not allowed back to England. The father replied: “Then the same conditions must be created.” After which his laboratory was bought from the British for 50 thousand pounds (five million dollars at the current exchange rate). Then an institute was built with modern equipment by those standards.

– In recent years, we have had quite a few different universities and academies. Don't they create a similar favorable scientific environment?
– The number of universities is growing, but the quality of education on average is falling. We have many so-called universities that are not really universities at all. Some pedagogical institute, which deserves rather the status of a school, suddenly calls itself a university. After the war, three high-level institutions were created - MIPT, MEPhI and MGIMO. They responded to the needs of the time. Now I don’t see any new educational institutions that would meet the new needs of the country - with the exception of the Higher School of Economics.

AIDS will be treated
– Nowadays there is a lot of talk about the problem of cloning. Don’t you think that experiments with cloning and the creation of a genetically modified person are beyond the bounds of morality?
– In the 20s of the last century, when they realized that there were different blood groups with certain laws of their compatibility and eventually learned how to transfuse blood, many thought that this was unacceptable: “Well, of course, someone else’s blood will flow in my veins.” ". The transfusion of blood, which is widely believed to contain the soul, has been subject to public condemnation. Now no one, except extreme religious sects, objects to blood transfusions. This is being done everywhere, thanks to which a colossal number of people have been saved. We are not talking about a genetic person yet. After all, cloning itself is still technically imperfect; we do not fully understand the details of this process, although we have carried it out on mice and sheep. Science still has a lot to learn about the very complex process of controlling embryonic development. And the moral problems that arise need to be discussed in order to prepare people for them, and not to intimidate them with various horror stories.

– How far is it until we create cures for cancer and AIDS?
– Science is moving towards this. Cancer is a very complex disease. But its nature is now clearer to us than before. It is already known that the disease is associated with certain features of cell development and the processes that control this development. The study of the nature of heredity brings us closer and closer to understanding this problem. As for AIDS, I think that in the coming decades ways will be found to combat this terrible disease, just as in the twentieth century they learned to treat smallpox, diphtheria and a large number of other diseases.

– On the other hand, the development of science and technology gives rise to a lot of problems. It is no coincidence that the 20th century went down in history primarily as a time of man-made disasters that continue to this day. This begs the question: are discoveries needed that humanity cannot then cope with?
– Man-made disasters existed before the 20th century, only before there were much fewer people, and accordingly there were fewer opportunities for accidents and explosions. Today, a much larger number of machines and all kinds of devices operate every day, so these days there are probably ten times more opportunities for accidents than even fifty years ago. Therefore, it only seems to us that the number of these disasters is increasing; in fact, the intensity of life is increasing.

In Japan everything is the same, but they live longer
– In recent years, you have been studying the humanities—demography, not physics.
“I had previously worked on accelerators, and we created a machine that had two important practical applications. It allowed nuclear reactor vessels to be illuminated and was also used to treat cancer. We made six of these machines that are still working today. The first one was installed at the Herzen Institute, and over 20 years, more than 18 thousand patients were cured with its help. There was talk of starting mass production, but at that moment everything collapsed, and only now is this process being resumed with great difficulty. We are told that we must establish production, we search and humbly ask for money, and when we find it, the government says: prove that it is necessary. In the early 90s, I was forced to leave for England, where, with the support of the English Royal Society, I took up problems of population dynamics. Living there with his wife is quite modest according to their standards, although, of course, it is more comfortable than back then in Russia. As a result of these studies, I discovered that much of what is happening now can be understood through the dynamics of the demographic development of the world's population. The main feature of the current moment is that humanity is at the very peak of the demographic transition from the unbridled growth that occurred before to saturation.
Our leadership is increasingly talking about demographic problems in Russia, but in all developed countries the situation is no better or worse. They just live there much longer. So, men in Japan outlive ours by 20 years. But the birth rate is declining everywhere. In Spain, the number of children per woman today is 1.2, in Germany – 1.41, in Japan – 1.37, among Italians, despite the prayers of the Pope – 1.12, here – 1.3, in Ukraine – 1.09, while for simple reproduction you need an average of at least 2.15 children. When growth stabilizes, the world's population will be twice as large as it is now, i.e. 10–12 billion. Humanity will reach this level in approximately 100 years.

– It’s strange, there are no world wars, diseases are getting better and better treated. Humanity now lives, in essence, in hothouse conditions, and the birth rate is falling.
– It is important to understand that it is not a matter of resources, and the fact that we pay women 250 thousand per child will not change the situation significantly. And this is not a purely Russian question, but a value crisis of the entire modern civilization. When society becomes civilized, other values ​​arise - work, career. Instead of getting married, building a family, having children, people get diplomas, academic degrees. And here is the result.

Did they just pose the question point blank?

Exactly. They were cynical.

Young people who came to television?

Yes, new management. What political attitudes they had can be seen from the results of their activities. This is the intellectual defeat of Russia. I cannot characterize their activities otherwise.

Well, yes, because your program was not politicized.

I served neither then nor today anyone other than the interests of the cause. I was non-partisan in everything. Although this was the highest nomenclature of our propaganda and was approved at the highest level. […]

Who was the generator of ideas, how were new programs born?

An idea generator... it comes out on its own. I have never known any refusal from my scientific colleagues - everyone was ready to help. There was always a feeling that something needed to be told. The main task is to find the right person. If he were a good person, there would be a good show. […]

Did working on “Obvious-Incredible” influence your professional destiny?

When I started these programs in 1973, one very pleasant academician, Lev Artsimovich, told me: “You know, Sergei, if you take up this business, you will put an end to your academic career. No matter what you do, they will not forgive you.” And so it turned out. […]

Should TV people have a responsibility to society?

I consider the topic of responsibility to be very significant, one of the main ones. Freedom must be limited by responsibility. But our intelligentsia does not understand this, it will destroy it. And in general, the topic of responsibility is one of the key ones in the modern world.

Your speech is unusual for our television; that’s what they used to say at the end of the 19th century.

I was told by subtle experts that my Russian and English are imperfect, they interfere with each other.

You probably stood out from the rest. This probably annoyed the television bosses...

Probably stood out. But somehow it was accepted. The main thing is that it was accepted. There were sometimes minor corrections to the pronunciation of some words, etc. In general, my speech comes from my ancestors: my father was a very prominent world-class scientist, my mother was also a very educated woman, my grandfather was Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov, a famous mathematician and shipbuilder.

How do you feel about English science fiction? The BBC makes a lot of films...

I think this is a positive thing, very positive. First of all, it is profitable. And politically, as they say, they do it very correctly.

And from the point of view of scientific quality?

BBC films are shallow - they are quite superficial and simplify matters.

Were your passes deeper?

The BBC rarely uses prominent scientists in its programmes. And in our programs, I think, in general, there were larger people. And they talked more about the essence of the problems of science and society.

You mainly have a discussion, but theirs is visual?

Yes, we have a discussion, and they have visual and educational activities. This is also very important and necessary, but slightly different methods, different address and different characters.

Do you watch the Discovery Channel?

Sometimes I watch. Very good. Professional things done in a different way, a different goal is pursued, and this is also necessary. I was in the Boston studio in America. This is a clone of the BBC tradition. I don’t even know if the studio exists now or not. Somehow I haven’t seen her lately... Carl Sagan (American astronomer, astrophysicist, popularizer of science) was a major personality on television, he worked on the creation of popular science television series, in particular the “Cosmos” series. Art critic Kenneth Clark had another series - “Nudity in Art”, such a world history of art. Major personalities were invited to speak about their views on the history of art. Starting from Ancient Egypt to the present day. The Impressionists were no longer acceptable to him.

Some of your traditions were developed in his own way, it seems, by Alexander Gordon in “Night Conversation”...

He is a talented person. But he didn't understand what he was talking about. Therefore, he always invited two people whom he knew how to play off. And then he could rise above them, this is such a technique. In addition, his personalities were secondary.

How do you know that viewers like the show?

You listen to what your friends and enemies tell you. And then some opinion arises. There must be self-criticism. But this depends precisely on the creative team that exists. Previously, there was correspondence on programs, this was monitored very carefully, instead of ratings, by the way. Unfortunately, the Academy of Russian Television has not become a body that could somehow discuss everything, outside of party interests. And this is very important. For example, before “TEFI” would not have turned into such... essentially, into the rule of one class. I haven’t received a single TEFI award. Only last year in 2008, when Vladimir Pozner left, I was given the award “For personal contribution to the development of Russian television.”

Kapitsa Sergey, Incredible and non-obvious, in the Collection of interviews: Air of the Fatherland. Creators and stars of domestic television and their work, Book 1 / Comp.: V.T. Tretyakov, M., “Algorithm”, 2010, p. 113-117 and 120-121.

“Thank you, Sergei Petrovich, for a happy childhood an hour a week”

A. Malyutin

Chief Researcher of the Institute of Physical Problems, Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa was known to millions and millions of Soviet people as the host of the most, surprisingly, exciting program on Soviet television - “Obvious - Incredible”.

"He was a ray of light"

Only his viewers grew up, became parents - and a new generation sat down to replace them, and most often, together with them, to watch this wonderful program. I myself still remember how I was glued to the screen and until the next program there were enough discussions, experiences and experiments on some incredible topic.

One thing is that the physicist, the son and grandson of physicists and engineers, Sergei Kapitsa, in his program in 1980, allowed a story about paranormal phenomena (without exaggeration, the entire Union then discussed the phenomenon of the disembodied shadow of a mother in front of a steam locomotive, which almost hit her child ) - suggests that his scientific intellect was free from conventions, limitless and courageous. And besides...

« Sergei Petrovich was the person who managed to ensure that issues related to science attracted a mass audience on television. That is, he combined the talent of a scientist and a popularizer. And his program “Obviously Incredible” was unique for a long time. Then others arose, but he was the founder of this genre, first on Soviet television, then on Russian television“- TV presenter Vladimir Pozner said about him.

The program “Obvious-Incredible” was broadcast in 1973, and 35 years later, in 2008, he received the special “TEFI” prize for his personal contribution to the development of Russian television. This year, Sergei Kapitsa received the first Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for outstanding achievements in the field of dissemination of scientific knowledge.

The program “Obvious-Incredible” continues to this day on the Kultura TV channel. Is there at least one other long-lived program like this?

Eight facts about Sergei Kapitsa

1. Chief Researcher of the Institute of Physical Problems, Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa was born on February 14, 1928 in Cambridge (Great Britain) into a family of outstanding Russian scientists.

2. His father, academician Pyotr Kapitsa, is a Nobel Prize laureate, a member of more than 30 academies and scientific societies around the world, a great experimental physicist, engineer and thinker.

3. Sergei Kapitsa’s grandfather was a mathematician and shipbuilder, academician Alexey Krylov. Sergei Kapitsa's brother, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrei Kapitsa was a geographer; Together with British scientists, he discovered the subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica.

4. Sergei Kapitsa began his scientific activity in 1949, working in such areas of physics as supersonic aerodynamics, terrestrial magnetism, applied electrodynamics, and elementary particle physics.

5. The main subject of Sergei Kapitsa’s research later became the demographic revolution, the dynamics of the growth of the Earth’s population, the use of the theory of dynamic systems and well-known methods of theoretical physics and synergetics in forecasting the future.

6. In 1983, he organized the publication in the USSR under the name “In the World of Science” of the Russian version of the popular science magazine Scientific American and was its editor-in-chief.

7. Kapitsa is the author of four books, dozens of articles, 14 inventions and one discovery. He put forward a phenomenological mathematical model of the hyperbolic growth of the Earth's population. Over many years of scientific activity, he became a laureate of numerous Russian and international awards.

8. Sergei Kapitsa was the president of the Eurasian Physical Society, a member of the European Academy of Sciences, and a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He was a member of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art and the Club of Rome. Awarded the Order of Honor and Order of Merit to the Fatherland, IV degree. Laureate of the Kalinga Prize (UNESCO), USSR State Prize (for creating the television program “Obvious - Incredible”), RAS Prize for the popularization of science, government prize in the field of education.

On February 14, 1928, the permanent host of the “Obvious - Incredible” program, Professor Sergei Kapitsa, was born.

At the very end of the thirties, an outrageous incident occurred at the Moscow Experimental Demonstration School No. 32, where the scions of the Soviet elite studied. In a fight during recess, the sons of People's Commissar Anastas Mikoyan and the nephew of People's Commissar Lazar Kaganovich were injured. Nothing serious, an ordinary boyish brawl between fifth graders. But the “aggressor”, throwing punches, shouted: “Beat the People’s Commissars!”
In that era, both the fighter himself and his parents could have suffered for such things. However, in this case everything worked out: the instigator was simply transferred to another school.

Four decades later, the boy Seryozha Kapitsa, who gave bruises to Mikoyan’s children, will become known throughout the country as the “chief TV scientist”, the host of the TV program “Obvious - Incredible.”

Two Kapitsa, two prizes.

When in the early seventies Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa, by that time already a venerable scientist, was invited to television as the host of a new popular science program, he turned for advice to one of the most titled physicists of the USSR, academician and Hero of Socialist Labor Lev Artsimovich.
Artsimovich, who treated Kapitsa well, sighed and said: “Try it. But it will cost you dearly. This will definitely affect the attitude of your colleagues towards you and will ruin your academic career.”
The forecast turned out to be accurate: Kapitsa, along with his program, gained fame and popularity, but the scientific world began to consider him not a scientist, but a popularizer of science. As a result, until the end of his days he never received the title of academician, which, based on the results of his scientific work, he certainly deserved.
His father, Pyotr Kapitsa, a world-famous physicist, also did not approve of his son’s television experiments, believing that “his Seryozha” was engaged in a “light genre.”
In 1978, Kapitsa Sr. was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. But a year later, Kapitsa Jr. received the Kalinga Prize: UNESCO's highest award for exceptional achievements in the field of popularization of science. This is how Sergei Kapitsa’s activities as the host of the “Obvious - Incredible” program were assessed.

The nightmare of the “red-nosers and trouble-makers.”

Today, under the guise of scientific knowledge, television feeds citizens either revelations of astrologers or battles of mediums. At best, we are offered programs with scientific experiments in the style of “let’s throw yeast in the toilet and see what happens.”
For Kapitsa, this approach was unacceptable. He did not intend to stoop to the level of the public, but did everything to raise knowledge about science to a fundamentally new height.
And he did it great. Together with Yuri Senkevich and Nikolai Drozdov, Kapitsa formed the educational troika of Soviet television. Senkevich was responsible for geography and partly history, Drozdov for biology, and Kapitsa took over almost the entire rest of the field of natural sciences.

“Dear program!
On Saturday, almost crying,
The entire Kanatchikova dacha
I was eager to watch the TV.
Instead of eating, washing,
Inject yourself and forget
The whole crazy hospital
Gathered at the screens"

Vladimir Vysotsky’s song “Letter to the editor of the television program “Obvious - Incredible” from a madhouse” is also a clear indicator of how high the level of popularity of the program was.

Kapitsa was not afraid to discuss in the program not only serious topics, but also pseudo-scientific theories and mysteries, for example, the so-called “secret of the Bermuda Triangle.” However, enthusiasts of such topics had a hard time: the presenter allowed them to speak, but then harshly opposed them, tearing all their supposedly “reliable facts” to smithereens.
The issue that inspired Vysotsky was dedicated to the Bermuda Triangle, and in it Kapitsa utterly defeated Vladimir Azhazha, who would later be called the “father of domestic ufology.” According to Vysotsky, Azhazha began to look like a “talker and a troublemaker” thanks to the professionalism of the presenter, who clearly showed how real science differs from pseudoscientific activity.

“If we continue this policy, we will raise a country of fools”

It’s scary to think what Sergei Petrovich would say if he saw a program on TV in which “flat Earth supporters” speak out without any criticism.
In one of his last interviews, Kapitsa said: “Several years ago, speaking at a government meeting, I said: “If we continue this policy regarding the media, we will raise a country of fools. It will be easier for you to rule this country, but this country will have no future.”
I also raised the issue of responsibility for disseminated information at a meeting of the Academy of Russian Television. They shushed me: “This is censorship!” How dare you say that?!’ In the end, I stopped going there altogether: it’s pointless.”

Transmission affected by freedom.

Kapitsa began working on television when it was led by Sergei Lapin, a man who “buried” more than one project and mercilessly excommunicated from the air those who, in his opinion, did not fit into the “general line.”
But this had practically no effect on the “Obvious - Incredible” program. The only loss is that the last line, “And chance, God the inventor,” was cut out of the famous Pushkin epigraph that opened the program. The word “god” on Soviet TV was considered seditious.
Kapitsa said about the rest: “When I started my work on television, then every publication in the field of science was accompanied by detailed acts of examination: that, they say, we do not give out secret information. Sergei Lapin, then the chairman of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, called me and explained: “Sergei Petrovich, we will not demand these examinations from you. You must be responsible for what you say. And we will watch." This is what guided me."
“The Obvious - the Incredible” is perhaps the only program that suffered not from Soviet censorship, but from post-Soviet permissiveness. In the early nineties, television bosses began to hint to Kapitsa: the public, they say, now needs to talk not about nuclear physics, but about zombies, UFOs and telekinesis. Professor Kapitsa politely but firmly explained: you shouldn’t contact him about this. Candidates for psychics and contactees with aliens were simply afraid of him, since he skillfully brought them to light.
As a result, although the program continued to exist until Kapitsa’s death, it wandered from channel to channel and ended up in the most unrated time. And in prime time at this time, the public was fed another eighth-generation fortune teller.

"A healthy and loud guy"

He had an amazing life. He was born and spent the first years of his life in Cambridge, where his father, Pyotr Kapitsa, worked in the laboratory of the “father” of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford.
“A healthy and loud guy. He’s very serious and sucks his fist... Now we can’t come up with a name,” Kapitsa Sr. wrote to his mother the day after the birth of his son.
The boy was named Sergei, but the British called him “Peter” because they could not pronounce the Russian name.
Mom called Seryozha Peter only in those cases when he was guilty of something. At the same time, she switched to English, although the Kapitsa family usually spoke only Russian.

Scientific family.

Pyotr Kapitsa was not an emigrant: he was on a long scientific mission and usually came to the USSR once a year. Arriving in 1934, the scientist learned that he would not return to England: this was the government’s decision.
For Kapitsa, by that time already a world-famous scientist, they built a “golden cage”: they created all the conditions for work, bought all his equipment in England, offered to gather around him all the necessary specialists, but did not allow him to travel abroad.
The family moved to the USSR: by that time Kapitsa already had a brother, who was named Andrei.
Andrei Kapitsa, unlike his brother, nevertheless became an academician. An outstanding geographer and geomorphologist, he is considered the author of the last great geographical discovery of the 20th century. In the fifties, he predicted the existence of a huge lake under the ice of Antarctica. The existence of this lake was confirmed in the nineties.
The Soviet government really needed Pyotr Kapitsa, so he was allowed more than others. He could afford to enter into polemics with Stalin, and took people from Beria’s department over whom the punitive sword of the authorities had already been brought. But at the end of the Stalin era, Kapitsa Sr. found himself in disgrace, being removed from active scientific work for several years.

From the catapult to the Microtron.

MAI graduate Sergei Kapitsa was affected by his father’s disgrace with his dismissal from the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI). The young scientist, who had a hand in creating the first domestic ejection systems, changed his field of activity. Having moved to the Institute of Physics of the Earth, he began to work on the problems of terrestrial magnetism. Talent will make its way everywhere: two years later, Kapitsa had already defended his Ph.D. thesis.
With the death of Stalin, the disgrace of Pyotr Kapitsa ended, who returned to active work, and the son began to work under the leadership of his father. Sergei Kapitsa's doctoral dissertation was the creation of the original Microtron particle accelerator.
In 1965, he received the title of professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where over the next three decades he taught general physics. Then he began writing popular science articles, which brought him to television.

One step away from death.

Kapitsa was a very versatile person. In the fifties, for example, he became one of the first Soviet scuba divers and was a pioneer of underwater documentary photography. In the sixties, at the documentary and sports film festival in Paris, Kapitsa’s film competed with the work of the legendary Jacques-Yves Cousteau himself.
True, this hobby, which the scientist retained throughout his life, once almost destroyed him. Due to equipment failure off the coast of Australia, Kapitsa was barely able to reach the surface. But even after that he continued to scuba dive.
Another time, death was watching over a scientist right in the academic building of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Dolgoprudny near Moscow. It was in December 1986, when Kapitsa's popularity reached its peak. A certain admirer of Orthodox-monarchist ideas, who saw in the scientist the “chief Jewish Freemason,” entered the audience and hit Sergei Petrovich on the head with a tourist hatchet. The physicist, however, turned out to be a strong man: he disarmed the attacker, managed to call doctors and the police himself, and only then lost consciousness.
Fortunately, the attempt did not have fatal consequences. It is not known exactly what happened to the attacker who was detained. According to some reports, he was declared insane and sent for compulsory treatment.

“Over the past 15 years, not a single scientific institute has been built, and almost everything that was destroyed”

Like his father, Sergei Kapitsa was a straightforward person and often criticized the Soviet system. Therefore, after the collapse of the USSR, the Russian authorities (as well as the liberal public) believed that the scientist would support the new course.
But it was not there. Kapitsa mercilessly criticized those in power for their attitude towards science and education.
In an interview in 2008, the scientist said: “Stalin left my father in the Soviet Union in 1935, building an institute for him in two years. Over the past 15 years, not a single scientific institute has been built, and almost everything that was was destroyed... At the Council of Ministers several years ago, they decided to allocate 12 million rubles for apartments for young scientists. And at this time a scandal broke out with the prosecutor, who renovated his apartment for 20 million. I picked up on this and said that if you allocated 12 billion for apartments for young scientists, you could improve matters. And all half measures are meaningless.”

“Understand: the purpose of life is not profit”

Direct, honest, uncomfortable - Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa was true to himself all his life. A few months before his death, while seriously ill, he said: “After perestroika, we began to think that everything is measured by money: I will give a scientist a million dollars if in a week he brings me two. But that’s not how things are done in science! You give a million today, and in 100 years this million will bring a billion to the country. But everyone wants quick money... But understand: the purpose of life is not profit. Buy yourself another yacht? Can. But why? Experience shows that saturation occurs very quickly. Our oligarchs, unfortunately, have not yet grown out of their short pants, so they want more and more wealth. They take and take..."
Professor Kapitsa did not like the Internet, considering it “garbage.” However, thanks to the World Wide Web, today anyone can watch the video archive of the “Obvious - Incredible” program. Do just that the next time the hand with the remote control reaches out to switch to the next season of some battle of clairvoyants. Sergei Petrovich is always with us.

Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa was born on February 14, 1928 in Cambridge - his father, an outstanding physicist and future Nobel Prize laureate Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, was there on a scientific trip at that time. Sergei Petrovich’s mother is Anna Alekseevna Krylova, daughter of the famous shipbuilder Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov.

“My father was a professor and studied physics,” recalled Sergei Kapitsa. “He went there in 1921, immediately after the Civil War and Revolution, when, after the terrible Spanish flu epidemic, he lost his first family. He lost his father, a prominent military builder, his first wife and two children. There was a terrible blow, and then with a group of scientists, which included his future father-in-law Academician Krylov, his teacher Ioffe and a number of other prominent scientists, he, as the scientific secretary of the delegation, was sent by decision of the Soviet government to Europe to restore scientific ties with European science. Then he was seconded to Rutherford’s laboratory in England, where his brilliant career began.”

It is interesting that Sergei Petrovich was baptized, and his godfather was the great physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.

In 1935, the family moved to Moscow, and Sergei Petrovich graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute. At the age of 33 he became a Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He worked at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute, from where he was fired due to his father’s disgrace. Then he worked at the Institute of Geophysics, at the Institute of Physical Problems named after. P. L. Kapitsa RAS. For 35 years he headed the country's largest department of physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

As a scientist, Sergei Kapitsa is known for his work in the field of applied electrodynamics, supersonic aerodynamics, and the study of terrestrial magnetism. Later, the main subject of his research became the demographic revolution and the dynamics of world population growth.

But Sergei Kapitsa gained the greatest fame as an outstanding popularizer of science. It all started with the book “The Life of Science,” which is a collection of prefaces and introductions to the fundamental scientific works from Vesalius and Copernicus to the present day, through which one can trace the development of science. The publication of this book became a prerequisite for the creation of the television program “Obvious - Incredible,” the permanent presenter of which Sergei Kapitsa has been since February 1973—it was then that the first episode of the program was released on television. “The Obvious - the Incredible” enjoyed enormous popularity, as evidenced by its mention in Vysotsky’s song or numerous anecdotes about Sergei Kapitsa and his colleagues on other popular science television programs, Nikolai Drozdov from “In the Animal World” and Yuri Senkevich from “The Club” travelers."

Over the past 39 years, the regular broadcast of the program was interrupted only twice. This happened for the first time in 1991.

“It was a time when Kashpirovsky and all sorts of other Chumaks reigned on the screen. The rational word found no place in the public consciousness. The crisis of the program “Obvious - Incredible” coincided with a crisis of attitude towards science in the public consciousness, but science will survive any crisis,” recalled Sergei Kapitsa in one of his last interviews.

Another forced break from the program occurred in 2006, when “Obvious - Incredible” “moved” from the TVC channel to “Russia”.

In addition to working on television, Sergei Petrovich, starting in the 80s, was the editor-in-chief of the magazine “In the World of Science,” the Russian-language version of the world-famous international magazine Scientific America.

Sergei Kapitsa is a member of more than 30 academies and scientific societies around the world. Here are some of them: European Academy of Sciences, World Academy of Arts and Sciences (Washington), Club of Rome.

But Sergei Petrovich was not an academician of the main national academy - the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Last year, he was elected to full membership of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the department of global problems and international relations, but lost the election. However, the Russian Academy of Sciences noted the merits of Sergei Petrovich by awarding the first Gold Medal in its history in 2012 for outstanding achievements in the field of dissemination of scientific knowledge.

Kapitsa called the fight against pseudoscience one of his main tasks.

“We don’t see any slowdown yet. Since I started popularizing science, the problem has become even more acute,” said Sergei Petrovich shortly before his death. — The activities of all kinds of charlatans and astrologers have become wider. This is a significant question that reflects the confusion in the minds of our times of transition. The volume of funds circulating in this area is comparable to the funding of science in general. The attitude towards science in the state reminds me of the joke about the horse and the gypsy, who, in order to save money, began to give it half as much oats - and nothing goes wrong. Then he cut the rations in half again - she was alive again. The gypsy again cut back on the amount of oats. Finally the horse died. So is science. You can’t test her survival for so long!”

Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa died a year and 11 days after the death of his brother, Andrei Petrovich Kapitsa, an outstanding geographer, author of the largest geographical discovery in the 20th century: the subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica.

“The main miracle is that we live. Our life itself is, of course, a great miracle. The birth of a child and what happens to him before our eyes, when in one and a half to two years he achieves such colossal progress, is also absolutely incredible. Although it’s obvious!” - said Sergei Kapitsa.