Leiden University at the university. The learning and reputation of Jacobus Gronovius, Herman Boerhaave, Tiberius Hemsterhuis and David Ruhnken, among others, enabled Leiden to maintain its reputation for excellence down to the end of the 18th century. At the end of the nineteenth century, Leiden University again became one of Europe's leading universities. At the world’s first university low-temperature laboratory, professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes achieved temperatures of only one degree above absolute zero of −273 degrees Celsius. In 1908 he was also the first to succeed in liquifying helium and can be credited with the discovery of the superconductivity in metals. The
Delft University of Technology Hanjalić, and the first Dutch prime minister of the Netherlands after World War II Wim Schermerhorn. Two TU Delft alumni were awarded Nobel Prize and one recipient has been affiliated with TU Delft: Jacobus van 't Hoff was awarded first Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1901 for his work with solutions. Simon van der Meer was awarded Nobel Prize in physics in 1984 for his work on stochastic cooling and one has been affiliated with TU Delft, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1913 for studies related to liquefaction of helium in the quest for the lowest temperature on Earth. Some of