Gilles Holst Philips Fysics Laboratory in Eindhoven ! Or Nat Lab. In 1909 he became an assistant to Heike Kamerlingh Onnes at Leiden University. At Leiden, it is believed that he was the first to witness the phenomenon of superconductivity. The Gilles Holst Award was first awarded in 1939. He died in Holland at the age of 82. Gilles Holst Gilles Holst (20 March 1886 – 11 October 1968) was a Dutch physicist, known worldwide for his invention in 1932 of the low-pressure sodium lamp. His father was a manager of a shipyard. In 1904 he went to ETH Zurich to study
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