Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

Dutch physicist

• Born: September 21, 1853
• Birthplace: Groningen, the Netherlands
• Died: February 21, 1926
• Place of death: Leiden, the Netherlands

Kamerlingh Onnes’s low-temperature studies produced the first liquefaction of helium and led to the discovery of superconductivity. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913.

Early Life

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (HI-keh KAH-mehr-lihng OHN-ehs) was the eldest child of Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, a brick and tile manufacturer, and Anna Gerdina Coers. He attended the Hoogere Burgerschool (comparable to an American high school) in Groningen and also undertook additional studies in Greek and Latin to qualify for admission to the University of Groningen. In 1870 he entered the university to study physics and mathematics. While a student, Kamerlingh Onnes won both a gold medal from the University of Utrecht and a silver medal from his own university for essays on assigned topics in chemistry.

In 1871, Kamerlingh Onnes went to the University of Heidelberg in Germany to study with Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff. Winning a Seminarpreis, he was able to remain in Kirchhoff’s laboratory until 1873, and then returned to Groningen. Six years later he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, “New Proofs for the Axial Rotation of the Earth,” a problem originally suggested by Kirchhoff. He was awarded the doctoral degree summa cum laude.

While an assistant to the director of the Polytechnicum (polytechnic school) at Delft (1878-1882), Kamerlingh Onnes became acquainted with J. D. van der Waals and his work on the behavior of gases and liquids and their continuity at the critical point. Van der Waals’s influence helped set the direction of Kamerlingh Onnes’s future research, as evidenced by his 1881 publication on the general theory of liquids, which began his exploration of the properties of substances at low temperatures. In 1882, Kamerlingh Onnes was appointed professor of physics at the University of Leiden, the first chair of experimental physics in the Netherlands and a position he held for forty-two years. In 1887 he married Elisabeth Bijleveld; they had one son.

Life’s Work

At Leiden, Kamerlingh Onnes set about his goal of gathering experimental support for van der Waals’s theory of gas behavior. With his belief that accurate measurements were possible at low temperatures, he constructed an apparatus to undertake such studies. By 1892 he was able to liquefy oxygen (-297 §F) and air (-318 §F) in large quantities and thus study the properties of various substances at these temperatures.

Six years later Sir James Dewar succeeded in liquefying hydrogen (-423 §F), and by 1906, Kamerlingh Onnes was producing large quantities of it in his own laboratory, thus extending his studies that much closer toward absolute zero (-459.7 §F). With his apparatus and additional cooling from the Joule-Thomson effect, he was able to produce temperatures as low as -458 §F, the lowest temperature achieved up to that time. In 1908 he successfully liquefied helium (-452 §F), the last gas resisting liquefaction because of the extremely weak attractive forces between helium atoms. For this achievement Kamerlingh Onnes received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913. Although his continued attempts to obtain solid helium were unsuccessful, just four months after his death in 1926, one of his students, and a successor as director of the cryogenic laboratory, W. H. Keesom, did succeed, but this required high pressure in addition to extremely low temperature.

Kamerlingh Onnes studied the properties of many substances at these low temperatures and observed various kinds of behavior that occur only in the vicinity of absolute zero. For example, he discovered a new form of helium (helium II), which has the unusual property of creeping up over the top of its container because surface forces between the helium atoms and its container are stronger than the gravitational and viscous forces. This phenomenon is known as the Onnes effect.

One of the most important properties that Kamerlingh Onnes investigated was the electrical resistance of metals. Scientists disagreed about its behavior at very low temperatures, and it was uncertain whether resistance would continue to decrease with decreasing temperature. Initially, Kamerlingh Onnes accepted the idea that resistance might reach a minimum value and then increase dramatically as electrons (the carriers of electricity) became immobilized at very low temperatures. When experiments contradicted this hypothesis, he adopted a model that predicted resistance would drop to zero as temperature approached absolute zero. This proved to be the case, though not as he anticipated. With very pure mercury, Kamerlingh Onnes found that the metal’s resistance decreased to a very small value and then dropped discontinuously to zero. Discovered in 1911, this phenomenon, now known as superconductivity, was found to occur with a number of different metals, all at different, but very low, temperatures.

Kamerlingh Onnes continued his low-temperature research for the remainder of his life, receiving many accolades, including awards and medals, memberships in numerous scientific societies and academies, and an honorary degree from the University of Berlin. During and after World War I he was active in improving relations between scientists from enemy nations and in providing food aid for starving children.

Significance

Kamerlingh Onnes’s achievements extend beyond his liquefaction of helium and discovery of superconductivity, though each was extremely important at the time. His development of low-temperature apparatus and techniques opened up an entirely new field of extreme cold for scientific investigation, which continues into the twenty-first century. While he had hoped that his discovery of superconductivity would make it relatively easy to produce strong magnetic fields, he found that such fields destroy the phenomenon of superconductivity, as does a current through a superconducting medium through its production of a magnetic field. Although Kamerlingh Onnes was unable to exploit superconductivity in this way, the later development of certain alloys that can support magnetic fields has made superconductivity useful in this area. His discovery was extremely important to the subsequent understanding of electrical conduction in solids, and the first satisfactory explanation of superconductivity finally appeared in the 1950’s.

Although Kamerlingh Onnes was primarily interested in using low temperatures and low-temperature measurements for investigating scientific questions, he also promoted their use in such applications as food preservation and refrigerated transport. He was instrumental in setting up organizations dedicated to the use of low temperatures for both scientific and societal ends.

Bibliography

Dahl, Per F. “Kamerlingh Onnes and the Discovery of Superconductivity: The Leyden Years, 1911-1914.” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 15 (1984): 1-37. Details the scientific work of Kamerlingh Onnes, his use of quantum theory, recognition of superconductivity, and definitive work in low-temperature physics before World War I.

De Bruyn Ouboter, Rudolf. “Heike Kamerlingh Onnes’s Discovery of Superconductivity.” Scientific American, March, 1997, 98-103. Discusses how Kamerlingh Onnes’s low-temperature study of helium led to his discovery of superconductivity.

De Nobel, Jacobus. “The Discovery of Superconductivity.” Physics Today 49, no. 9 (1996): 40-42. Reminiscences of the author’s extensive discussions with Gerrit Jan Fleem, longtime assistant to Kamerlingh Onnes, about the discovery of superconductivity.

Gavroglu, Kostas, and Yorgos Goudaroulis, eds. Through Measurement to Knowledge: The Selected Papers of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, 1853-1926. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer, 1991. A selection of Kamerlingh Onnes’s most important publications in English translation, with an introductory essay by the editors, explanatory notes for the papers, and a complete bibliography of his publications.

Nobel Lectures: Physics, 1901-1921. 1967. Reprint. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1998. Includes Kamerlingh Onnes’s Nobel lecture, the presentation lecture, and a brief biography.

Reif-Acherman, Simón. “Heike Kamerlingh Onnes: Master of Experimental Technique and Quantitative Research.” Physics in Perspective 6 (2004): 197-223. Overview of Kamerlingh Onnes’s experimental and quantitative research and methodology.

Sengers, Johanna Levelt. How Fluids Unmix: Discoveries by the School of Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes. Amsterdam: Edita, 2002. Intellectual history of the collaborative work of J. D. Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes about the liquefaction of gases at low temperatures.

Van Berkel, Klaas, Albert Van Helden, and L. C. Palm, eds. A History of Science in the Netherlands: Survey, Themes, and Reference. Boston: Brill, 1999. Broad overview of Dutch science from the sixteenth century, containing a brief biography of Kamerlingh Onnes, as well as numerous references to him within the context of the science of his time.

Van Delft, Dirk. Freezing Physics: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and the Quest for Cold. Amsterdam: Edita, 2007. Biography examining Kamerlingh Onnes’s development of a cryogenics laboratory and his own personal and scientific traits that contributed to his success.