Professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, c mid-20th century

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, born 21 September 1853, in Groningen, Netherlands. Died, 21 February 1926. Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch experimental physicist. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913 for research into liquefying helium to the coldest temperature achieved at the time. Kamerlingh Onnes attend the University of Groningen in 1870, and then the University of Heidelberg from 1871 to 1873. He then obtained his Masters in 1878 and PhD in 1879 at Groningen. From 1882 to 1923, he worked as a Professor Experimental Physics at Leiden University. He became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1905. He is known for discovering liquid helium (1908) and superconductivity (1911). He was married to Maria Adriana Wilhelmina Elisabeth Bijlevel in 1887 and they had one son, Albert Kamerlingh Onnes. He died in 1926, aged 72.