Johannes Diderik van der Waals higher temperatures. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and helium subsequently succumbed to liquefaction. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was significantly influenced by the pioneer work of van der Waals. In 1908, Onnes became the first to make liquid helium; this led directly to his 1911 discovery of superconductivity. Van der Waals started his career as a school teacher. He became the first physics professor of the University of Amsterdam when in 1877 the old Athenaeum was upgraded to Municipal University. Van der Waals won the 1910 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids. Johannes Diderik
Pieter Rijke 1836. The title of his Ph.D. thesis was "De origine electricitatis voltaicae". In 1835 he was appointed professor of physics at the Royal Athenaeum in Maastricht. In 1845 he became extraordinary professor and in 1854 he was promoted to full professor of physics at the University of Leiden. There he started a physics laboratory with a large collection of scientific instruments. His most important students were H.A. Lorentz and J.D. van der Waals. He retired in 1882, and was succeeded by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes as professor of experimental physics at the University of Leiden. Rijke became a member of the