Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
1853–1926, Groningen, Netherlands, Leiden, Netherlands
Dutch physicist who first liquefied helium and discovered superconductivity, winning the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Kamerlingh Onnes held the chair of experimental physics at Leiden University from 1882 for over four decades, building its laboratory into the world's leading centre for low-temperature research. In 1908 he became the first to liquefy helium, reaching lower temperatures than ever before; three years later his laboratory discovered that mercury's electrical resistance vanished abruptly near helium's boiling point — the phenomenon he named 'superconductivity'. His laboratory motto, 'Door meten tot weten' (Through measurement to knowledge), expressed his experimental creed.
Nobel-winning work
The 1913 Nobel Prize honoured 'his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium'. On 10 July 1908, Kamerlingh Onnes became the first person to liquefy helium, the last element still to exist only as a gas, reaching about 4.2 K — less than five degrees above absolute zero. The feat, which required a scientific 'factory' chaining successive cooling stages, made Leiden the cryophysics capital of the world.
In 1911, using liquid helium to explore how metals conduct electricity near absolute zero, he found that mercury's resistance fell to essentially zero below about 4.2 K — the discovery of superconductivity, an entirely new state of matter. These achievements opened the field of low-temperature physics, later bearing fruit in superfluidity, superconducting magnets, and quantum technology.
Workplaces: Leiden University
Netherlands