Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes FRSFor HFRSE FCS ( (); 21 September 1853 – 21 February 1926) was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He exploited the Hampson–Linde cycle to investigate how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero and later to liquefy helium for the first time, in 1908. He was also the discoverer of superconductivity in 1911. Kamerlingh Onnes was born in Groningen, Netherlands. His father, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, was a brickworks owner. His mother was Anna Gerdina Coers of Arnhem. In 1870, Kamerlingh Onnes attended the University of Groningen. He studied under Robert Bunsen
Leiden scale Leiden scale The Leiden scale (°L) was used to calibrate low-temperature indirect measurements in the early twentieth century, by providing conventional values (in kelvins, then termed "degrees Kelvin") of helium vapour pressure. It was used below -183°C, the starting point of the International Temperature scale in the 1930s (Awbery 1934). The Leiden scale probably goes back to around 1894, when Heike Kamerlingh Onnes' cryogenic laboratory was established in Leiden, Netherlands. It has been reported that the scale is the kelvin scale shifted so that the boiling points of hydrogen and oxygen become zero and 70 respectively, but this is unlikely