The “100 Years of Superconductivity” Symposium and Technology Milestone Dedications held April 8 in Leiden, The Netherlands, were major commemorations of this important anniversary.
The one-day symposium featured talks by Professor Dirk Van Delft, Director of the Museum Boerhaave, on “Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and His Cryogenic Laboratory,” and by Professor Peter Kes, Leiden Institute of Physics,” on “The Notebooks of Kamerlingh Onnes and the Discovery of Superconductivity.” At the Kamerlingh Onnes building at the University of Leiden, the original location of the Leiden Physical Laboratory, Dr. Johan Overweg of Philips Research discussed “New Developments in MRI,” and Professor Jan Zaanen of the Lorentz Institute of Theoretical Physics spoke on “Superconductivity in the 21st Century.”
At the special exhibition “Mercury Practically Zero”—a quotation from Onnes’ notebook entries on April 8, 1911—visitors to the Museum Boerhaave, the Dutch National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine, viewed original apparatus and documents concerning the discovery.
Highlight of the day was a special ceremony held at 4 p.m., the time of the discovery, when two plaques were dedicated in the Kamerlingh Onnes building, the very site of the discovery. The plaque presented by IEEE President Moshe Kam designated the location as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing. The Milestones honor significant technical achievements that have occurred at least 25 years ago in technology areas associated with IEEE. The Milestone was sponsored by the IEEE Council on Superconductivity and the IEEE Benelux Section. A second plaque containing the same inscription was presented in Dutch by Philips Research. Gilles Holst, the first Director of Philips Research in 1914, was part of the superconductivity discovery team.
