Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology

The National Science Center Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology (KIPT) (Ukrainian: Національний науковий центр «Харківський фізико-технічний інститут»), formerly the Ukrainian Physics and Technology Institute (UPTI) is the oldest and largest physical science research centre in Ukraine.

From the moment of its creation, the institute was run by the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry.

The Soviet nuclear physicists Anton Valter, Georgiy Latyshev, Cyril Sinelnikov, and Aleksandr Leipunskii used a lithium atom nucleus.

Later the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology was able to obtain liquid hydrogen and helium.

During Stalin's Great Terror in 1938, the institute suffered the so-called UPTI Affair: three leading physicists of the Kharkiv Institute (Lev Landau, Yuri Rumer and Moisey Korets) were arrested by the Soviet secret police.

National Science Center, Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology
Group photo of the KIPT physicists in 1934
Commemoratve plaque about the nuclear fission conducted in 1932