Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (; 21 September 1853 – 21 February 1926) was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He exploited the Hampson-Linde cycle to investigate how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero and later to liquefy helium for the first time. His production of extreme cryogenic temperatures led to his discovery of superconductivity in 1911: for certain materials, electrical resistance abruptly vanishes at very low temperatures.