Sir John Cunningham McLennan, (October 14, 1867 – October 9, 1935) was a Canadian physicist. Born in Ingersoll, Ontario, the son of David McLennan and Barbara Cunningham, he was the director of the physics laboratory at the University of Toronto from 1906 until 1932. McLennan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1915. McLennan delivered the

Guthrie lecture The Michael Faraday Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics in experimental physics. The award is made "for outstanding and sustained contributions to experimental physics." The medal is accompanied by a pri ...

to the Physical Society in 1918. With his graduate student, Gordon Merritt Shrum, he built a helium liquefier at the University of Toronto. They were the second in the world to successfully produce liquid helium in 1923, 15 years after

Heike Kammerlingh Onnes Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (21 September 1853 – 21 February 1926) was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He exploited the Hampson–Linde cycle to investigate how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero and later to liquefy helium f ...

. In 1926, he was awarded the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

's Flavelle Medal and in 1927 a

Royal Medal The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important ...

. He died in 1935 near Abbeville in France on a train from Paris to London of a heart attack. He is buried beside his wife in

Stow of Wedale Stow of Wedale, or more often Stow, is a village in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland (historically Midlothian), north of Galashiels. In the 2011 Census the population was 718. It is served by Stow railway station. The name The name Stow is ...

, Scotland.

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