Superconductivity Superconductivity Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic flux fields occurring in certain materials, called superconductors, when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature. It was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911, in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. It is characterized by the Meissner effect, the complete ejection of magnetic field lines from the interior of the superconductor during its transitions into the superconducting state. The occurrence of the Meissner effect indicates that superconductivity cannot be understood simply as the idealization of
Frans Michel Penning Derksen in 1921 and they had four children named Lourens, Hendricus, Paul, and Nellie. In 1924, Penning was hired as an experimental physicist at the Dutch section of the Phillips research department located in the Strijp district of Eindhoven. Gilles Holst, former assistant to Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, and head of the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (NatLab), tasked Penning with continuing research on gas discharge phenomena to develop new lamps. Penning investigated breakdown energy potentials of low pressure inert gas discharges. In 1926, Penning observed that electrons under direct voltage current in low-pressure mercury discharges reach high velocities due to high-frequency oscillations