Freezing physics 0311-07_Kamerlingh_Voorwerk.indd1 1 26-11-2007 16:45:51 History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands, volume 10 The series History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands presents studies on a variety of subjects in the history of science, scholarship and academic institutions in the Netherlands. Titles in this series 1. Rienk Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans. The reception of the new astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575-1750. 2002, isbn 90-6984-340-4 2. Gerhard Wiesenfeldt, Leerer Raum in Minervas Haus. Experimentelle Naturlehre an der Universität Leiden, 1675-1715, 2002, isbn 90-6984-339-0 3. Rina Knoeff, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738). Calvinist chemist and physician. 2002, isbn 90-6984-342-0 4. Johanna Levelt Sengers, How fluids unmix. Discoveries by the School of Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes. 2002, isbn 90-6984-357-9 5. Jacques L.R. Touret and Robert P.W. Visser, editors, Dutch pioneers of the earth sciences, 2004, isbn 90-6984-389-7 6. Renée E. Kistemaker, Natalya P. Kopaneva, Debora J. Meijers and Georgy Vilinbakhov, editors, The Paper Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St Peterburg (c. 1725-1760), Introduction and Interpretation, 2005, isbn 90-6984-424-9, isbn dvd 90-6984-425-7, isbn Book and dvd 90-6984-426-5 7. Charles van den Heuvel, ‘De Huysbou’. A reconstruction of an unfinished treatise on architecture, town planning and civil engineering by Simon Stevin, 2005, isbn 90-6984- 432-x 8. Florike Egmond, Paul Hoftijzer and Robert P.W. Visser, editors, Carolus Clusius. Towards a cultural history of a Renaissance naturalist, 2007, isbn 978-90- 6984-506-7 9. Lissa Roberts, Simon Schaffer, Peter Dear, editors, The mindful hand: inquiry and invention from the late Renaissance to early industrialisation, 2007, isbn 978-90- 6984-483-1 10. Dirk van Delft, Freezing physics. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and the quest for cold, 2007, isbn 978-90-6984-519-7 Editorial Board K. van Berkel, University of Groningen W.Th.M. Frijhoff, Free University of Amsterdam A. van Helden, Utrecht University W.E. Krul, University of Groningen A. de Swaan, Amsterdam School of Sociological Research R.P.W. Visser, Utrecht University 0311-07_Kamerlingh_Voorwerk.indd2 2 26-11-2007 16:45:51 Freezing physics Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and the quest for cold Dirk van Delft Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam 2007 0311-07_Kamerlingh_Voorwerk.indd3 3 26-11-2007 16:45:51 Originally published as Heike Kamerlingh Onnes – een biografie, Bert Bakker, Amsterdam, 2005. Translated from the Dutch by Beverly Jackson. Copyright © 2007 Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Information and orders: Edita knaw P.O. Box 19121, 1000 gc Amsterdam, the Netherlands t + 31 20 551 07 00 f + 31 20 620 49 41 e [email protected] www.knaw.nl/edita isbn 978-90-6984-519-7 The paper in this publication meets the requirements of « iso-norm 9706 (1994) for permanence. The English translation of this book was made possible by a subsidy of the NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek/Nether- lands Organisation for Scientific Research). Illustration cover: Detail of the schematic view of the bottom part of the cryostat with which Kamerlingh Onnes achieved the record low temperature of 0.83 K in 1921. (See illustration 55). 0311-07_Kamerlingh_Voorwerk.indd4 4 26-11-2007 16:45:51 Contents Preface 1 Introduction 5 Prologue 13 1. Between Schifpot en Noorderhaven 19 2. That wonderful HBS 32 3. No drinking binges 49 4. Heidelberg 63 5. Restless atoms 78 6. ‘Maintain and refine’ 94 7. Foucault’s pendulum 105 8. Delft: corresponding states and other matters 123 9. To Leiden 139 10. New heights 153 11. ‘Door meten tot weten’: knowledge through measurement 172 12. Monstrosity gets a face-lift 184 13. The fullness of wisdom 202 14. Cold war (i) 211 15. The Lorentz series 230 16. The Zeeman effect 246 17. A collection of explosive devices 261 18. Retrograde condensation 287 19. Into the breach for Van der Waals 305 20. The blue-collar boys 319 21. Stolen rooms and other personnel matters 337 22. Committee work: a necessary evil 358 23. Cold war (ii) 380 24. Old peat and neighbourhood squabbling 407 25. Die Zustandsgleichung 418 26. Huize ter Wetering 441 27. Monsieur Zéro Absolu 455 28. The quantum and zero-point energy 468 contents v 0311-07_Kamerlingh_Voorwerk.indd5 5 26-11-2007 16:45:51 29. ‘Supra-conductivity’ 494 30. A chocolate from Stockholm 512 31. World War: turning-point 524 32. Declining years 545 33. Successors 571 34. Duty, joy and harmony 587 Epilogue: the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory 606 Glossary 613 Illustration sources 616 Chronology 619 Sources and abbreviations/terms used in references to sources 622 Bibliography 624 Name index 649 Subject index 661 vi contents 0311-07_Kamerlingh_Voorwerk.indd6 6 26-11-2007 16:45:51 Preface I only have to shut my eyes for a moment and I am back at the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory. Not the grey measuring hall on the outskirts of Leiden, but the original labyrinth opposite Van der Werff Park on Steenschuur, in the very heart of Leiden. A few years ago this complex was transformed into the premises of the law faculty, and the old name blazoned in gold letters on the eaves in 1932 was truncated to plain kamerlingh onnes. The unsightly bulges annexed to the main building, including the laboratory in which Heike Kamer- lingh Onnes liquefi ed helium on 10 July 1908, were demolished to make room for new buildings. But that does not hurt me, and in my mind I let the old front door swing shut behind me, walk up the stairs to the right, and set off past the instrument-makers’ workshops towards lab I, to Zeeman’s windows. I fi rst saw those windows in September 1969, trying to fi nd my way around the corridors as a fi rst-year physics student. The building was full of funny lit- tle staircases, mysterious passageways, annexes and outlying rooms where pumps chugged away and researchers hunched intently over cases of electron- ics and cold fl asks (cryostats), on their way to absolute zero. What a jumbled mess of a building! That was Heike’s fault. As soon as he took charge of the laboratory’s north wing in 1882, as the new professor of experimental physics, he decided on a thorough programme of renovation, and when the chemistry and anatomy departments doggedly stayed put in the rest of the building, thwarting his plans, he solved the problem of space with an endless series of annexes. Like a wayward growth, the complex expanded down the street, around the corner of Langegracht, into the back garden and into the front garden. Functionality overrode any aesthetic objections. Arriving at the main building, I turn left. On the right, high up in the wall, halfway down the corridor with its chequered tile fl oor and harsh light, are three stained-glass windows, each one measuring 1.75 × 0.72 metres. Together they depict the discovery – and explanation – of the Zeeman effect. This phenomenon, the splitting (or rather widening) of light under the infl uence of a magnetic fi eld, was discovered in August/September 1896 by Pieter Zeeman in the room behind the windows. Zeeman’s superior, Kamerlingh Onnes, preface 1 00311-07_Kamerlingh_01.indd311-07_Kamerlingh_01.indd 1 226-11-20076-11-2007 116:51:536:51:53 submitted the fi rst article on the effect to the meeting of the Academy of Sciences on his student’s behalf, after which Lorentz produced an explanation for it within just two days. In 1902 Zeeman and Lorentz became the joint re- cipients of the Nobel Prize for physics. Twenty years later, Kamerlingh Onnes paid tribute to his two friends by commissioning these windows. Subdued and austere in form, they arrest the gaze of any passer-by. I look up and see Zee- man peering tensely at sodium light between electromagnets, while Lorentz is engrossed in his formulas. Art and science coalesce in geometrically shaped stained-glass panes, in a style reminiscent of Bart van der Leck. It was years after my fi rst acquaintance with these windows that I noticed the plaque beneath them with the artist’s name: Harm Kamerlingh Onnes. Harm, I discovered, was the son of Heike’s artist brother, Menso Kamerlingh Onnes. So there were several Kamerlingh Onnesses, and the family apparently possessed an aptitude for art as well as physics. I was curious, and my curiosity nagged at me intermittently for years, until I decided to indulge both my passion for the history of science and my passion for writing by producing a biography of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. That was in 1990. Since then, my mind has pulsed with the doings of the Kamerlingh Onnes family, and they have all become close acquaintances. The problem was that my work as science editor for the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad left me little time for the biography. The project did not re- ally take off until 2002, when I was appointed as the fi rst ‘writer-in-residence’ of the NIAS, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. I am extremely grateful to Ben Knapen and Mai Spijkers of PCM Publishers and the then director of NIAS, Henk Wesseling, for giving me that opportunity, and to the chief editors of NRC Handelsblad for their generosity in letting me go for a while.