Anton Z. Capri was born in 1938 in Czernowitz, Romania. His father was Leon Kapri, Freiherr (Baron) von Mericey. His father changed the family name back to the original spelling of Capri after the family moved to Canada in 1949.
After St. Paul’s School in Toronto Anton attended Jarvis Collegiate Institute and finished as valedictorian in 1957. He then entered the University of Toronto and graduated in 1961 with a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Physics. In 1960 he married Skaidrite Kveps. After Anton got his B.A.Sc. he accepted a position with Kimberley-Clark Corporation in their Pioneering Research Department in Neenah, Wisconsin.
In 1963 he entered Princeton University as a graduate student in physics and finished with an M.A in 1965 and Ph.D. under Professor Arthur S. Wightman in 1967. He then accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Alberta. This turned into a visiting professorship in 1968 and into a tenure track position in 1969. Until his retirement as a full professor in 1998, Anton remained at the University of Alberta.
During his academic career, Anton Capri published more than seventy research papers, five books on physics and chapters in several books on physics. He also served as the director of the Theoretical Physics Institute of the University of Alberta. Since retirement he has published two nonfiction books, a book of short stories, and five novels book of short stories, and a book of poetry as well as several stories, and numerous poems.
During his academic career he spent a year as an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute für Physik und Astrophysik, Munich, Germany and was frequently invited as guest professor or research scientist to the following institutions: University of Innsbruck, Austria; University of Pisa, University of Milan, University of Trento, Italy; University of Poona, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India:; ifu University, Gifu, Japan.
At present he continues his association with the University of Alberta as Professor Emeritus. He is also Adjunct Professor at Athabasca University, Alberta.
Anton Z. Capri has three daughters, one granddaughter, three grandsons, and two great-granddaughters. He lives with his wife in Edmonton and travels frequently to his cottage north of Athabasca. His activities include writing, hunting, fishing, and badminton.
Books by Anton Z. Capri
When after 243 years in cryogenic suspension, multi-billionaire, Robert de Groot awakes to a world in which immortality is his for the taking he has to decide. Does he want a life of eternal youth that will go on indefinitely? Can he trust the beautiful immortal Yvonne or the scheming mortal, JJ Tyrone? Is this world without poverty or war really the Eden it appears to be? Something seems missing, but what? Why has mankind with all the technological advances not strived to reach the stars? With his tremendous wealth, Robert pursues these questions. He finds himself an outsider, never able to be a part of the bored, immortal elite, nor a part of the more alive, ordinary mortals.
On the gallows, Johnny Fist learns that deaths not a simpler matter. You do not die immediately when you are killed.. Life truly flashes before your eyes at the moment of death. Johnny gets to relive part of his life. He has to learn the difference between imagination and reality, not just reality as he sees it, but also the reality as seen by his victims He remains undead until he accepts the reality as seen by people he hurt and until he learns repentance.
During the period of the Cold War, nuclear war was a constant threat to the world. Since then the world has become more complacent about the possibility of such an event. This complacency is based on a false sense of belief in human sanity. In this work of fiction, I describe what a nuclear war would imply. An idea of the resultant catastrophe may be gained from the 1882 eruption of Krakatoa. This eruption –– much smaller in effect than a nuclear war –– resulted in a global temperature decrease of 1.2 C (2.2 F) and produced a “year without a summer”. Temperatures did not return to normal until six years later. In this novel I have, for literary reasons, shortened the time scale for return to normal temperatures to about two years. Although all the events are fictitious, the results of a nuclear war, followed by a nuclear winter are, if anything, even more horrendous than depicted. The locale is placed in northern Alberta in an area familiar to me.
This collection of short stories deals with a myriad of topics: from the magical powers of a jacket and the arrowhead of a long dead hunter, to the power of a woman’s love for her forest, and the unwise wish of a man. There are the musings of a man as he leaves through an old album, as well as the last thoughts of a dying man. A native boy struggles to escape from a residential school. A rich man has to decide whether to embrace immortality. In Fantasy, Robert discovers both good fishing and an erotic adventure when he meets the beautiful Rowena on a hiking trip in the Rockies. Succession deals with a son’s relationship with his father as they go duck hunting. Visits to India and a magical northern forest are some of the many topics explored in these stories. A young scientist discovers a new science while another scientist discovers that it is all right to allow oneself to change. There is also justice as seen through a boy’s eyes.