Heinz London
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Heinz London (
Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
, Germany 7 November 1907 – 3 August 1970) was a German-British physicist. Together with his brother
Fritz London Fritz Wolfgang London (March 7, 1900 – March 30, 1954) was a German physicist and professor at Duke University. His fundamental contributions to the theories of chemical bonding and of intermolecular forces (London dispersion forces) are today c ...
he was a pioneer in the field of
superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...
.


Biography

London was born in Bonn in a liberal Jewish-German family. His father, Franz London, was professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn and his mother, Luise Burger, was the daughter of a prosperous textile manufacturer. His father died of heart failure when Heinz was nine years old. The greatest influence on Heinz's childhood was his older brother
Fritz Fritz originated as a German nickname for Friedrich, or Frederick (''Der Alte Fritz'', and ''Stary Fryc'' were common nicknames for King Frederick II of Prussia and Frederick III, German Emperor) as well as for similar names including Fridolin a ...
. Throughout their lives the two brothers maintained a close relationship. Heinz followed in his older brother's footsteps, studying physics, but became an experimental physicist instead and obtained his PhD under the famous superconductivity physicist
Francis Simon Sir Francis Simon (2 July 1893 – 31 October 1956), was a German and later British physical chemist and physicist who devised the gaseous diffusion method, and confirmed its feasibility, of separating the isotope Uranium-235 and thus made a m ...
. This connection also gave Heinz the opportunity to leave Nazi Germany.
Frederick Lindemann Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, ( ; 5 April 18863 July 1957) was a British physicist who was prime scientific adviser to Winston Churchill in World War II. Lindemann was a brilliant intellectual, who cut through bureauc ...
invited Francis Simon to join the
Clarendon Laboratory The Clarendon Laboratory, located on Parks Road within the Science Area in Oxford, England (not to be confused with the Clarendon Building, also in Oxford), is part of the Department of Physics at Oxford University. It houses the atomic and ...
at the
University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...
in 1933 supported by money obtained from chemical company ICI. When Francis Simon did he brought Heinz London as his assistant as well as
Nicholas Kurti Nicholas Kurti, ( hu, Kürti Miklós) (14 May 1908 – 24 November 1998) was a Hungarian-born British physicist who lived in Oxford, UK, for most of his life. Career Born in Budapest, Kurti went to high school at the Minta Gymnasium, but due ...
. While working in Oxford, Heinz shared a rented house with his brother Fritz and sister in-law Edith where together the brothers developed the
London equations The London equations, developed by brothers Fritz and Heinz London in 1935, are constitutive relations for a superconductor relating its superconducting current to electromagnetic fields in and around it. Whereas Ohm's law is the simplest const ...
. By 1936 the money that had funded the refugee scientists had dried up and Lindemann could not find funds to offer positions to them and many others. Heinz was in a junior position without any expectation of remaining at Oxford, and so took an appointment at the University of Bristol. Fritz held out for a position at Oxford which never came and later accepted an offer by the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris, in September 1939 moved to the Duke University After the outbreak of World War II. In 1940 Heinz was declared a civilian enemy alien and interned on the Isle of Man, but was then released to co-operate with the British nuclear program. In 1942 he obtained British citizenship. Heinz was a lifelong heavy smoker and died from lung cancer in 1970. He was an atheist.


Education

London studied at multiple institutions as was customary at the time in Germany. He was at the University of Bonn in 1926/27. After that he interned for six months at a chemical plant for
Heraeus Heraeus is a German technology group with a focus on precious and special metals, medical technology, quartz glass, sensors and specialty light sources. Founded in Hanau in 1851, the company is one of the largest family-owned companies in German ...
in Hanau, Germany. In 1929 he spent a year of study at the Technical University Berlin-Charlottenburg (now the
Technical University of Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...
) and then he was at the University of Munich until 1931. In late 1933, he obtained his PhD under the low temperature physicist
Franz Simon Sir Francis Simon (2 July 1893 – 31 October 1956), was a German and later British physical chemist and physicist who devised the gaseous diffusion method, and confirmed its feasibility, of separating the isotope Uranium-235 and thus made a ...
at the
University of Breslau A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
, with a thesis "on the possibility of the occurrence of high frequency residual resistance in superconductors".


Career

London worked with his brother
Fritz London Fritz Wolfgang London (March 7, 1900 – March 30, 1954) was a German physicist and professor at Duke University. His fundamental contributions to the theories of chemical bonding and of intermolecular forces (London dispersion forces) are today c ...
on
superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...
, discovering the
London equations The London equations, developed by brothers Fritz and Heinz London in 1935, are constitutive relations for a superconductor relating its superconducting current to electromagnetic fields in and around it. Whereas Ohm's law is the simplest const ...
when working at the
University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...
, in the
Clarendon Laboratory The Clarendon Laboratory, located on Parks Road within the Science Area in Oxford, England (not to be confused with the Clarendon Building, also in Oxford), is part of the Department of Physics at Oxford University. It houses the atomic and ...
. These equations gave a first explanation to the
Meissner effect The Meissner effect (or Meissner–Ochsenfeld effect) is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the superconducting state when it is cooled below the critical temperature. This expulsion will repel a n ...
(and, so, to the properties of superconductors). He is known as well for being the inventor of the
dilution refrigerator A 3He/4He dilution refrigerator is a cryogenics, cryogenic device that provides continuous cooling to temperatures as low as 2 Kelvin, mK, with no moving parts in the low-temperature region. The cooling power is provided by the heat o ...
, a cryogenic device that uses
liquid helium Liquid helium is a physical state of helium at very low temperatures at standard atmospheric pressures. Liquid helium may show superfluidity. At standard pressure, the chemical element helium exists in a liquid form only at the extremely low temp ...
.


Honours and awards

London was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in 1961, his nomination read


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:London, Heinz 1907 births 1970 deaths Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom People interned in the Isle of Man during World War II Fellows of the Royal Society Academics of the University of Bristol