Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike
Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike (1853-1926), a Dutch physicist. He was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in physics for his experiments with low temperatures. Kamerlingh Onnes was the first to liquefy helium (1908) and in 1911 discovered superconductivity; that is, the abnormally high electrical conductivity displayed by certain substances when they are cooled to very low temperatures. Kamerlingh Onnes was born in Groningen. He became a professor of physics at the University of Leiden in 1882 and there founded the Cryogenic Laboratory (1894) for research in extremely low temperatures. He retired in 1923.