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
Harm Kamerlingh Onnes Harm Kamerlingh Onnes Harm Henrick Kamerlingh Onnes (15 February 1893 – 20 May 1985 in Leiden) was a Dutch portrait painter and ceramist, who also produced designs for stamps and stained-glass windows. He is best known for the small, humorous vignettes of everyday life. Kamerlingh Onnes was born in Zoeterwoude in 1893. His father Menso Kamerlingh Onnes was a painter and member of the Hague School, who in 1911 gave his son permission to develop as an artist. He also gave him his first drawing and painting lessons. One of his uncles was the painter Floris Verster, and another uncle