Andrey Kapitsa

Andrey Petrovich Kapitsa (; 9 July 1931 – 2 August 2011) was a Soviet and Russian geographer and Antarctic explorer, discoverer of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica. He was a member of the Kapitsa family, a scientific dynasty in Russia. Kapitsa was the first to suggest the existence of Lake Vostok in the region of Vostok Station in Antarctica, based on seismic soundings of the thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet. These measures were obtained during the Soviet Antarctic Expeditions, in four of which Kapitsa participated. The discovery of Lake Vostok was one of the last major geographic discoveries. Early life Andrey Kapitsa's father was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Pyotr Kapitsa, and his maternal grandfather was mathematician and naval engineer Aleksey Krylov. Pyotr Kapitsa's sons Sergey and Andrey were born in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where their father was conducting research. Andrey graduated from Moscow State University, Faculty of Geography, in 1953. He worked in the Laboratory of Experimental Geomorphology at the faculty since.