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

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
 physicist
Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
. His scientific career was spent exploring extremely cold refrigeration
Refrigeration

Refrigeration is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space, or from a substance, and moving it to a place where it is unobjectionable....
 techniques and the associated phenomena.

rlingh Onnes was born in Groningen
Groningen (city)

||-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |}Groningen is the capital city of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of 185,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands....
, Netherlands
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
. His father, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, was a brickworks owner. His mother was Anna Gerdina Coers of Arnhem.

In 1870, Kamerlingh Onnes attended the University of Groningen
University of Groningen

The University of Groningen , located in the city of Groningen , was founded in 1614. It is the second List of oldest universities in continuous operation and one of largest university in the Netherlands....
.






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

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
 physicist
Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
. His scientific career was spent exploring extremely cold refrigeration
Refrigeration

Refrigeration is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space, or from a substance, and moving it to a place where it is unobjectionable....
 techniques and the associated phenomena.

Biography


Early years

Kamerlingh Onnes was born in Groningen
Groningen (city)

||-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |}Groningen is the capital city of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of 185,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands....
, Netherlands
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
. His father, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, was a brickworks owner. His mother was Anna Gerdina Coers of Arnhem.

In 1870, Kamerlingh Onnes attended the University of Groningen
University of Groningen

The University of Groningen , located in the city of Groningen , was founded in 1614. It is the second List of oldest universities in continuous operation and one of largest university in the Netherlands....
. He studied under Robert Bunsen
Robert Bunsen

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a Germany chemist. He investigated electromagnetic spectroscopy of heated elements, and with Gustav Kirchhoff he discovered cesium and rubidium....
 and Gustav Kirchhoff
Gustav Kirchhoff

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff was a Germany physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects....
 at the University of Heidelberg from 1871 to 1873. Again at Groningen, he obtained his masters 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
Johannes Bosscha

Johannes Bosscha Jr. was a Dutch people physicist.Bosscha came from a family long known for their academic achievements. His great-grandfather and grandfather were classical scholars....
, the director of the Polytechnic in Delft
Delft

See also: Delft, Cape Town, Delft Island Media:Nl-Delft.ogg is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland . It is located in between Rotterdam and The Hague....
, for whom he substituted as lecturer in 1881 and 1882.

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

Within the field of physics, experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines concerned with the observation of physical phenomena in order to gather data about the universe....
 at the University of Leiden. In 1904 he founded a very large cryogenics
Cryogenics

In physics, cryogenics is the study of the production of very low temperature and the behavior of materials at those temperatures. Rather than the familiar temperature scales of Fahrenheit and Celsius, cryogenicists use the Kelvin scales....
 laboratory and invited other researchers to the location, which made him highly regarded in the scientific community. In 1908, he was the first physicist to liquify helium
Helium

Helium is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert monatomic chemical element that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table and whose atomic number is 2....
, using the Hampson-Linde cycle
Hampson-Linde cycle

The Hampson-Carl von Linde cycle is based on the Joule-Thomson effectand is used in the liquefaction of gases. W. Hampson and Carl von Linde independently filed for patent of the cycle in 1895....
 and cryostat
Cryostat

A Cryostat is a vessel, similar in construction to a vacuum flask, or Dewar used to maintain cold cryogenic temperatures....
s. Using the Joule-Thomson effect
Joule-Thomson effect

In thermodynamics, the Joule?Thomson effect or Joule?Kelvin effect or Kelvin?Joule effect describes the temperature change of a gas or liquid when it is forced through a valve or porous plug while kept insulated so that no heat is exchanged with the environment....
, he lowered the temperature to less than one degree above absolute zero
Absolute zero

Absolute zero is a temperature marked by a 0 entropy configuration. It is the coldest temperature theoretically possible, and cannot be reached, by artificial or natural means....
, reaching 0.9 K. At the time this was the coldest temperature achieved on earth
Coldest temperature achieved on Earth

The coldest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth was -89.2?C at the Russian Vostok Station in Antarctica July 21, 1983. Lower temperatures have been achieved artificially, including a record cold temperature of 450 1 E-12 K, or 4.5 ? 10-10 K at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003....
. The original equipment is at the Boerhaave Museum
Boerhaave Museum

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

Media:Nl-Leiden.ogg is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants....
.

He was married to Maria Adriana Wilhelmina Elisabeth Bijleveld (m. 1887) and had a child named Albert.

Superconductivity

Kamerlingh Onnes conducted (in 1911) electrical analysis of pure metals (mercury
Mercury (element)

Mercury , also called quicksilver or hydrargyrum , is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. A heavy, silvery d-block metal, mercury is one of six elements that are liquid at or near room temperature and pressure....
, tin
Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. Tin is obtained chiefly from the mineral cassiterite, where it occurs as an oxide, SnO2....
 and lead
Lead

Lead is a main-group Chemical element with symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal, also considered to be one of the heavy metal ....
) at very low temperatures. Some, such as William Thomson
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin , Order of Merit , Royal Victorian Order, Privy Council of the United Kingdom, Presidents of the Royal Society, Royal Society of Edinburgh, was an Ireland-born United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Mathematical physics and engineer....
 (Lord Kelvin), believed that electron
Electron

The electron is a subatomic particle that carries a negative electric charge. It has elementary particle and is believed to be a point particle....
s flowing through a conductor would come to a complete halt or, in other words, metal resistivity will become infinity at absolute zero. Others, including Kamerlingh Onnes, felt that a conductor's electrical resistance
Electrical resistance

The electrical resistance of an object is a measure of its opposition to the passage of a steady electrical current. An object of uniform cross section will have a resistance proportional to its length and inversely proportional to its cross-sectional area, and proportional to the resistivity of the material....
 would steadily decrease and drop to nil. Augustus Matthiessen pointed out when the temperature decreases, the metal conductivity usually improves or in other words, the electrical resistivity usually decreases with temperature . At 4.2 kelvin
Kelvin

The kelvin is a Units of measurement of temperature and is one of the seven SI base units. The Kelvin scale is a Thermodynamic temperature scale where absolute zero, the theoretical absence of all thermal energy, is zero ....
 the resistance was zero according to the observation of Kamerlingh Onnes and his co-workers. The drop to zero was experimentally observed to be abrupt. Kamerlingh Onnes stated that the "Mercury has passed into a new state, which on account of its extraordinary electrical properties may be called the superconductive state
Superconductivity

Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials generally at very low temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance and the exclusion of the interior magnetic field ....
". 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
Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Prize in literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine....
 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

Kamerlingh Onnes died in Leiden
Leiden

Media:Nl-Leiden.ogg is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants....
. Some of the instruments he devised for his experiments can still be seen at the Boerhaave Museum
Boerhaave Museum

Museum Boerhaave is a museum of the history of science and medicine, based in Leiden, The Netherlands. The museum hosts a collection of historical scientific instruments from all disciplines, but mainly from medicine, physics, and astronomy....
 in Leiden. The apparatus he used to first liquefy helium is on display in the lobby of the physics department at Leiden University
Leiden University

Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Oldest Universities by Region university in the Netherlands....
, 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

Willem Hendrik Keesom was a Netherlands physicist who, in 1926, invented a method to freeze liquid helium.He also developed the first mathematical description of Intermolecular force#Dipole-dipole interactions in 1921....
 was the first person who was able to solidify helium, in 1926.

The Onnes-effect
Rollin film

A Rollin film, named after Bernard V. Rollin, is a 30 nanometre-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 ....
 referring to the creeping of superfluid
Superfluid

Superfluidity is a phase or description of heat capacity in which unusual effects are observed when liquids, typically of helium-4 or helium-3, overcome friction by surface interaction when at a stage at which the liquid's viscosity becomes zero....
 Helium is named in his honor.

The crater Kamerlingh Onnes
Kamerlingh Onnes (crater)

Kamerlingh Onnes is a Moon Impact crater on the Far side of the Moon. It lies less than a crater diameter to the north-northwest of the crater Kolh?rster ....
 on the Moon
Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
 is named after him.

Honours and awards

  • Matteucci Medal
    Matteucci Medal

    The Matteucci Medal was established to award physicists for their fundamental contributions. Under an Italy Royal Decree dated July 10, 1870, the Italian Society of Sciences was authorized to receive a donation from Carlo Matteucci for the establishment of the Prize....
     (1910)
  • Rumford Medal
    Rumford Medal

    The Rumford Medal is awarded by the Royal Society every alternating year for "an outstandingly important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical properties of matter made by a scientist working in Europe"....
     (1912)
  • Nobel Prize for Physics (1913)


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., "The Superconductivity of Mercury." Comm. Phys. Lab. Univ. Leiden, Nos. 122 and 124, 1911
  • Kamerlingh Onnes, H., "On the Lowest Temperature Yet Obtained." Comm. Phys. Lab. Univ. Leiden, No. 159, 1922.


See also

  • Timeline of low-temperature technology
    Timeline of low-temperature technology

    The following is a timeline of Refrigeration technology and Cryogenics technology ....
  • Timeline of states of matter and phase transitions
    Timeline of states of matter and phase transitions

    Timeline of states of matter and phase transitions* 1895 - Pierre Curie discovers that induced magnetization is proportional to magnetic field strength...
  • Coldest temperature achieved on earth
    Coldest temperature achieved on Earth

    The coldest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth was -89.2?C at the Russian Vostok Station in Antarctica July 21, 1983. Lower temperatures have been achieved artificially, including a record cold temperature of 450 1 E-12 K, or 4.5 ? 10-10 K at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003....
  • List of Nobel laureates
    List of Nobel laureates

    The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Nobel Prize in Physiolo...
  • History of superconductivity
    History of superconductivity

    The history of superconductivity, the property exhibited by certain substances of lacking electrical resistance at temperatures close to absolute zero, began at the end of the 19th century and culminated in Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's 1911 discovery....


Further reading

  • Van Delft, D., "Heike Kamerlingh Onnes". Amsterdam, Bert Bakker, 2005. ISBN 90-351-2739-0 (in Dutch; an is in preparation)
  • Levelt-Sengers, J. M. H., . Amsterdam, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen
    Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

    The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands....
    , 2002. ISBN 90-6984-357-9
  • Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike, (Gavroglou, Kostas. [ed.], and Goudaroulis, Yorgos [ed.]) "Through measurement to knowledge : the selected papers of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926)". Dordrecht, Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers, c1991. Goudaroulis, Yorgos. ISBN 0-7923-0825-5
  • International Institute of Refrigeration (First International Commission), "Rapports et communications issus du Laboratoire Kamerlingh Onnes". International Congress of Refrigeration (7th; 1936; La Hauge), Amsterdam, 1936.


External links

  • Scientists of the Dutch School , Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Albert van Helden In: K. van Berkel, A. van Helden, and L. Palm ed., A History of Science in The Netherlands. Survey, Themes and Reference (Leiden: Brill, 1999) 491 - 494.
  • Nobel Prize
    Nobel Prize

    The Nobel Prize , established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Prize in Literature, and Nobel Peace Prize in 1901....
    , -- official site.
  • - Dutch National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine.
  • , Nobel-winners.com.
  • Eric W. Weisstein , .
  • Dirk Reimer, "", A Guide to Superconductivity. 1997.
  • Museum Boerhaave
  • J. van den Handel, , in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland. (In Dutch).
  • Biography of at the National library of the Netherlands.
  • Freezing Physics: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and the Quest for Cold , Van Delft Dirk (2007). Edita - The Publishing House Of The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. ISBN 9789069845197.