The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike
(h´k kä´mrlng ôn´s) (KEY) , 18531926, Dutch physicist. He was, from 1882, professor of physics at the Univ. of Leiden. He made important studies of the properties of helium and, in attempting to solidify it, produced a temperature within one degree of absolute zero. In the course of his low temperature experiments, he discovered the property of superconductivity in certain metals. For these researches he received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics.