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
Lowest temperature recorded on Earth 1960, held the record until a temperature of was measured at the Soviet Vostok Station, on the Antarctic Plateau, on July 21, 1983. This remains the record for a directly recorded temperature. In 1904 Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes created a special lab in Leiden with the aim of producing liquid helium. In 1908 he managed to lower the temperature to less than −269 °C (-452.2 F, 4 K), which is less than four degrees above absolute zero. Only in this exceptionally cold state will helium liquefy, the boiling point of helium being at −268.94 °C (-452.092 F). Kamerlingh Onnes