Freezing Physics

In 1908, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853–1926) liquefied helium for the first time, briefly rendering his Dutch laboratory “the coldest place on earth.” Freezing Physics is the first book to tell the story of Leiden University’s famed cryogenics laboratory and the man behind it, whose scientific accomplishments earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics.

This fascinating portrayal of Kamerlingh Onnes traces his storied career from his first experiments with helium to his later work that opened up unexplored territories of extreme cold, magnetism, and thermodynamics—and cleared the path for the eventual discovery of superconductivity in 1911. Dirk van Delft here illuminates the scientific acuity, managerial talent, and visionary character that equipped Kamerlingh Onnes to almost single-handedly change the course of the history of physics.