Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (21 September 1853 – 21 February 1926) was a Dutch

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and Nobel laureate. He exploited the

Hampson–Linde cycle The Hampson–Linde cycle is a process for the liquefaction of gases, especially for air separation. William Hampson and Carl von Linde independently filed for patents of the cycle in 1895: Hampson on 23 May 1895 and Linde on 5 June 1895. The Ha ...

to investigate how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero and later to liquefy

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

for the first time, in 1908. He also discovered superconductivity in 1911.

Biography

Early years

Kamerlingh Onnes was born in Groningen, Netherlands. His father, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, was a brickworks owner. His mother was Anna Gerdina Coers of

Arnhem Arnhem ( or ; german: Arnheim; South Guelderish: ''Èrnem'') is a city and municipality situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands about 55 km south east of Utrecht. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland, located on both ban ...

. In 1870, Kamerlingh Onnes attended the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; nl, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, abbreviated as RUG) is a public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. Founded in 1614, the university is th ...

. He studied under

Robert Bunsen Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (; 30 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...

and

Gustav Kirchhoff Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He ...

at the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

from 1871 to 1873. Again at Groningen, he obtained his master's degree in 1878 and a doctorate in 1879. His thesis was ''Nieuwe bewijzen voor de aswenteling der aarde'' (''tr''. New proofs of the rotation of the earth). From 1878 to 1882 he was assistant to Johannes Bosscha, the director of the Delft Polytechnic, for whom he substituted as lecturer in 1881 and 1882.

Family

He was married to Maria Adriana Wilhelmina Elisabeth Bijleveld (m. 1887) and had one child, named Albert. His brother Menso Kamerlingh Onnes (1860–1925) was a painter (and father of another painter,

Harm Kamerlingh Onnes Harm Henrick Kamerlingh Onnes (15 February 1893 – 20 May 1985 in Leiden) was a Dutch portrait painter and ceramist, Mienke Simon Thomas (2008). Goed in vorm: honderd jaar ontwerpen in Nederland'' p. 188 who also produced designs for stamps and ...

), while his sister Jenny married another painter, Floris Verster (1861–1927).

University of Leiden

From 1882 to 1923 Kamerlingh Onnes served as professor of experimental physics at the

University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...

. In 1904 he founded a very large

cryogenics In physics, cryogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The 13th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration (held in Washington DC in 1971) endorsed a universal definition of “cryogenics” and “cr ...

laboratory and invited other researchers to the location, which made him highly regarded in the scientific community. The laboratory is known now as Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory. Only one year after his appointment as professor he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Liquefaction of helium

Leiden - Kamerlingh Onnes Building - Commemorative plaque

On 10 July 1908, he was the first to liquefy

, using several precooling stages and the

based on the Joule–Thomson effect. This way he lowered the temperature to the boiling point of helium (−269 °C, 4.2 K). By reducing the pressure of the liquid helium he achieved a temperature near 1.5 K. These were the coldest temperatures achieved on earth at the time. The equipment employed is at the

Museum Boerhaave Rijksmuseum Boerhaave is a museum of the history of science and medicine, based in Leiden, Netherlands. The museum hosts a collection of historical scientific instruments from all disciplines, but mainly from medicine, physics, and astronomy. Th ...

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wi ...

Superconductivity

In 1911 Kamerlingh Onnes measured the electrical conductivity of pure metals ( mercury, and later

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

and

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

) at very low temperatures. Some scientists, such as William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), believed that

electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no ...

s flowing through a conductor would come to a complete halt or, in other words, metal resistivity would become infinitely large at absolute zero. Others, including Kamerlingh Onnes, felt that a conductor's electrical resistance would steadily decrease and drop to nil.

Augustus Matthiessen Augustus Matthiessen, FRS (2 January 1831, in London – 6 October 1870, in London), the son of a merchant, was a British chemist and physicist who obtained his PhD in Germany at the University of Gießen in 1852 with Johann Heinrich Buff. He ...

said that when the temperature decreases, the metal conductivity usually improves or in other words, the electrical resistivity usually decreases with a decrease of temperature. On 8 April 1911, Kamerlingh Onnes found that at 4.2 K the resistance in a solid mercury wire immersed in liquid helium suddenly vanished. He immediately realized the significance of the discovery (as became clear when his notebook was deciphered a century later). He reported that "''Mercury has passed into a new state, which on account of its extraordinary electrical properties may be called the superconductive state''". He published more articles about the phenomenon, initially referring to it as "''supraconductivity''" and, only later adopting the term "superconductivity". Kamerlingh Onnes received widespread recognition for his work, including the 1913

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

for (in the words of the committee) "''his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, ''inter alia'', to the production of liquid helium''".

Legacy

Some of the instruments Kamerlingh Onnes devised for his experiments can be seen at the Boerhaave Museum in

. The apparatus he used to first liquefy helium is on display in the lobby of the physics department at Leiden University, where the low-temperature lab is also named in his honor. His student and successor as director of the lab

Willem Hendrik Keesom Willem Hendrik Keesom () (21 June 1876, Texel – 3 March 1956, Leiden) was a Dutch physicist who, in 1926, invented a method to freeze liquid helium. He also developed the first mathematical description of dipole–dipole interactions in 1 ...

was the first person who was able to solidify helium, in 1926. The former Kamerlingh Onnes laboratory building is currently the Law Faculty at Leiden University and is known as "Kamerlingh Onnes Gebouw" (Kamerlingh Onnes Building), often shortened to "KOG". The current science faculty has a "Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratorium" named after him, as well as a plaque and several machines used by Kamerling Onnes in the main hall of the physics department. The

Kamerlingh Onnes Award The Kamerlingh Onnes Award is in recognition of special merits of scientists active in the field of refrigeration technology, cryogenics and more generally low-temperature science and technology. It was founded in 1948 by the Royal Dutch Associat ...

(1948) and the

Kamerlingh Onnes Prize The Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize was established in 2000, under the sponsorship of Elsevier, by the organizers of the International Conference on the Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (M2S). The prize is named in honor of Heike Kamerli ...

(2000) were established in his honour, recognising further advances in low-temperature science. The

Onnes effect A Rollin film, named after Bernard V. Rollin, is a 30 nm-thick liquid film of helium in the helium II state. It exhibits a "creeping" effect in response to surfaces extending past the film's level (wave propagation). Helium II can escape from ...

referring to the creeping of

superfluid Superfluidity is the characteristic property of a fluid with zero viscosity which therefore flows without any loss of kinetic energy. When stirred, a superfluid forms vortices that continue to rotate indefinitely. Superfluidity occurs in two ...

helium is named in his honor. The crater Kamerlingh Onnes on the Moon is named after him. Onnes is also credited with coining the word "

enthalpy Enthalpy , a property of a thermodynamic system, is the sum of the system's internal energy and the product of its pressure and volume. It is a state function used in many measurements in chemical, biological, and physical systems at a constant ...

". Onnes's discovery of superconductivity was named an IEEE Milestone in 2011.

Honors and awards

Matteucci Medal The Matteucci Medal is an Italian award for physicists, named after Carlo Matteucci from Forlì. It was established to award physicists for their fundamental contributions. Under an Italian Royal Decree dated July 10, 1870, the Italian Society ...

(1910) * Rumford Medal (1912) *

(1913) *

Franklin Medal The Franklin Medal was a science award presented from 1915 until 1997 by the Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the Am ...

(1915)

Selected publications

* Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "Nieuwe bewijzen voor de aswenteling der aarde." Ph.D. dissertation. Groningen, Netherlands, 1879. * Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "Algemeene theorie der vloeistoffen." ''Amsterdam Akad. Verhandl''; 21, 1881. * Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "On the Cryogenic Laboratory at Leyden and on the Production of Very Low Temperature." ''Comm. Phys. Lab. Univ. Leiden''; 14, 1894. * Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "Théorie générale de l'état fluide." ''Haarlem Arch. Neerl.''; 30, 1896. * Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "Further experiments with liquid helium. C. On the change of electric resistance of pure metals at very low temperatures, etc. IV. The resistance of pure mercury at helium temperatures." ''Comm. Phys. Lab. Univ. Leiden''; No. 120b, 1911. * Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "Further experiments with liquid helium. D. On the change of electric resistance of pure metals at very low temperatures, etc. V. The disappearance of the resistance of mercury." ''Comm. Phys. Lab. Univ. Leiden''; No. 122b, 1911. * Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "Further experiments with liquid helium. G. On the electrical resistance of pure metals, etc. VI. On the sudden change in the rate at which the resistance of mercury disappears." ''Comm. Phys. Lab. Univ. Leiden''; No. 124c, 1911. * Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "On the Lowest Temperature Yet Obtained." ''Comm. Phys. Lab. Univ. Leiden''; No. 159, 1922.

References

External links

* ** including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1913 ''Investigations into the Properties of Substances at Low Temperatures, which Have Led, amongst Other Things, to the Preparation of Liquid Helium''
About Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Nobel-winners.com. * J. van den Handel
''Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike (1853–1926)''
in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland. (In Dutch).
Leiden University historical web site

Correspondence with James Dewar
the main competitor in the race to liquid helium.

(1885–1898).

of Kamerlingh Onnes (1885-1924). {{DEFAULTSORT:Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike 1853 births 1926 deaths 20th-century Dutch physicists Cryogenics Dutch Nobel laureates 20th-century Dutch inventors Leiden University faculty Nobel laureates in Physics Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925) Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Foreign Members of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Scientists from Groningen (city) University of Groningen alumni Heidelberg University alumni Delft University of Technology faculty Recipients of the Matteucci Medal