Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, abbreviated as SPbPU, is a public technical university located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The university houses one of the country's most advanced research labs in hydro–aerodynamics. The university's alumni include Nobel Prize winners, such as Pyotr Kapitsa and Zhores Alferov, physicists and atomic weapon designers such as Yulii Khariton, Nikolay Dukhov, Abram Ioffe, Aleksandr Leipunskii, and Yakov Zeldovich, aircraft designers and aerospace engineers, such as Yulii Khariton, Oleg Antonov, Nikolai Polikarpov, and Georgy Beriev, and chess grandmasters, such as David Bronstein. The university offers academic programs at the Bachelor, Master's, and Doctorate degree levels. SPbSPU consists of structural units called Institutes divided into three categories: Engineering Institutes, Physical Institutes, and Economics and Humanities Institutes. In 2022, the university was ranked #301 in the world in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, #393 in QS World University Rankings, #679 in Best Global Universities Rankings by U.S. News & World Report, and #1,005 by Center for World University Rankings.

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa or Peter Kapitza was a leading Soviet physicist and Nobel laureate, whose research focused on low-temperature physics.