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
History of superconductivity has a boiling point of 4.2 kelvins at atmospheric pressure. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Jacob Clay reinvestigated Dewar's earlier experiments on the reduction of resistance at low temperatures. Onnes began the investigations with platinum and gold, replacing these later with mercury (a more readily refinable material). Onnes's research into the resistivity of solid mercury at cryogenic temperatures was accomplished by using liquid helium as a refrigerant. On April 8, 1911, 16:00 hours Onnes noted "Kwik nagenoeg nul", which translates as "[Resistance of] mercury almost zero." At the temperature of 4.19 K, he observed that the resistivity abruptly disappeared (the measuring