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
Floris Verster 1880 and 1884 Verster continued his training at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague where he counted among his fellow-students George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israëls and Willem de Zwart. After graduation, he briefly attended classes at Amedee Bourson in Brussels. From 1882-1892 he shared a studio in Leiden with his future brother-in-law, the still-life painter Menso Kamerlingh Onnes (he married Jenny Kamerlingh Onnes in 1892). Until about 1885 he worked in the style of the Hague School. The next seven years he experimented in still life painting under the influence of his brother-in-law and of French painters Antoine