Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

Karl Anthony Schindler

He was born on September 21, 1853 in the Netherlands. After finishing his secondary school, he entered the University of Groningen and obtaind what would nowadays be considered his Bachellor's Degree the following year. After pursuing more studies, he obtained his doctor's degreee in 1879 with a thesis called "New prrofs of the rotation of the earth." In the meantime he had become a professor's assistant at an institute in Delft, where he then became a professor of experimental physics. In 1094 he founded a large cryogenics laboratory, to which he invited other researchers to share, making him highly regarded in the scientific community. In 1908, he was the first person to liquefy helium. After some more work, using the Joule-Thomson effect, he lowered the temperature to 0.9K, which is less than one degree over absolute zero. It was the coldest temperature reached on earth at the time. In 1911, he conducted electrical analysis of pure metals at very low temperatures. Although other scientists expected the flow of electrons to come to a complete stop and make resistivity infinite at absolute zero, Onnes was one of the few that believed the resistivity would decrease to zero. After conducting an experiment on the resistivity of a column of mercury more than once, he realized his idea was correct and published articles on superconductivity. For this, he received much recognition for his work, including the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics. There is even a crater on the moon named after him. Apart from all the science, his favorite recreations included his family life and helping those who needed it. Although he enjoyed his work very much, he was not pompous about it. He was a man of great personal charm.

It seems he would be an excellent example to follow for us 'scientists in development,' as he included great humility and humanity with his great mind. Thought cannot be useful to humanity without feeling, since mostly every other human has much feeling and is driven by it.