Russian physicist and popular science TV show host Sergei Kapitsa died on Tuesday in Moscow at age 84.
Born in Cambridge, England, he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1949. His father is the physicist and Nobel laureate Pyotr Kapitsa.
Sergei Kapitsa made contributions to physics in supersonic aerodynamics, applied electrodynamics, and accelerator physics.
He was best known as host of the long running science TV show Ochevidnoye-Neveroyatnoye (Evident, but Incredible, launched in 1973) for which was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in 1979..
He was also active in issues of science and society through his participation in the Pugwash conferences and the Club of Rome.
Kapitsa was vice president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Russia, president of the Eurasian Physical Society, senior research associate at the Lebedev Physics Institute, the Russian Academy of Sciences and professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.