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
Johannes Kuenen experiments with x-rays with the physiologist Edward Waymouth Reid. In 1907 he was appointed professor of physics at Leiden University. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Kuenen led the Kamerlingh Onnes physics Laboratory. On the basis of his scientific work he was elected in 1911 as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and became a member of the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in 1915. He discovered retrograde condensation and published his findings in 1892 in the Ph.D. thesis with the title "Metingen betreffende het oppervlak van Van der Waals voor mengsels van koolzuur en chloormethyl". (Measurements