archive of the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory
The history of the physics laboratory at Leiden University goes back more than a century. Much of the material of historic interest is kept at the Boerhaave Museum, in particular the equipment used by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and by Pieter Zeeman in their Nobel prize winning experiments. The laboratory keeps a small archive of its historic past, moved from the original site in downtown Leiden to its present location near Oegstgeest. (Dirk van Delft wrote an essay about this archive, in Dutch.)
- Explore the photo archive from the period 1898-1948.
- Two photo albums (1) and (2) from the 1940's, and some more photographs.
- Read the correspondence (1895-1922) with the competitor James Dewar in the race to liquify helium.
- Here is more correspondence of laboratory affairs (1883-1916), mostly in Dutch, transcribed by Jan Coremans.
- Reprint inventory (1866-1960), compiled by Jan Huiskamp.
- Communications from the Laboratory (1885-1898).
- Physica (1921-1933).
- Ph.D. theses of Kamerlingh Onnes's students (1885-1924).
- Read the memoirs of a Soviet postdoc at the laboratory in the late 1920's.
- Cornelis Dorsman, who was present at the discovery of superconductivity in 1911, left us a few documents.
