Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

In 1887, Onnes married Maria Adriana Wilhelmina Elisabeth Bijleveld. The couple had a son Albert Kamerlingh Onnes, who later became a very high ranking civil servant at The Hague. Their home was well known for the hospitality it offered.

Onnes was a great scientist, but not a workaholic. He had a very loving nature and aided by his wife, he took part in many humanitarian activities, such as ironing out political differences between scientists during the First World War and helping starving children in poorer countries with food shortage.

He suffered from poor health and died at Leyden on February 21, 1926 after a short illness.

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was born on September 21, 1853, at Groningen, Netherlands. His father, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, owned a bricklaying business near Groningen. His mother, Anna Gerdina Coers, was the daughter of an architect from Arnhem.

Heike Onnes had two siblings. His brother, Menso Kamerlingh Onnes, grew up to be a fairly well known painter while his sister, Jenny, married Floris Verster, another famous painter.

Onnes received his secondary education at Hoogere Burgerschool and passed out from there in 1870. Since the school did not teach classical languages, he took supplementary tuition in Greek and Latin.

Subsequently, he enrolled at the University of Groningen, receiving his ‘candidaats’ degree in 1871. Later in October, he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg, studying under Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff.

Sometime now, he also started his doctoral thesis under Gustav Kirchhoff, but returned to the University of Groningen in April 1873. There he continued the same work under R. A. Mees.

In 1878, a year before he received his doctoral degree, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes began his career as an assistant to Johannes Bosscha, the director of the Polytechnicum in Delft. Later from 1881 to 1882, he worked as a lecturer in place of Bosscha, concurrently, carrying out his own research work.

Also in 1881, he came in contact with van der Waals, Professor of Physics at Amsterdam, and one of the promoters of corpuscular theory. Onnes was highly influenced by him.

Subsequently, he published his first paper on the properties of matter at low temperatures. Titled, ‘Algemeene theorie der vloeistoffen’ (General theory of liquids), it dealt with the kinetic theory of the liquid state.

In April 1882, Onnes was appointed as the Professor of Experimental Physics and Meteorology in the University of Leiden. In his inaugural address, ‘De beteekenis van het quantitatief onderzoek in de natnurkunde’ (The importance of quantitative research in physics), he clearly spelled the motto of his life ‘Door meten tot weten’ (Knowledge through measurement).

On being appointed as a Professor of Experimental Physics, Onnes decided to provide experimental support to van der Waals’s theory on the behavior of gases. However, to prove that experimentally, Onnes had to build an apparatus that would be able to liquefy air in large quantity.

He is known for his investigations regarding how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero. He liquefied helium for the first time and his production of extreme cryogenic temperatures led to his discovery of superconductivity..