en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero
1 correction found
describing superconductivity and superfluids for the first time
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered superconductivity, but he did not first discover superfluidity. Nobel sources credit Pyotr Kapitsa with discovering superfluidity in helium in 1937.
Full reasoning
This sentence incorrectly combines two different firsts.
- Superconductivity was indeed first discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911.
- But superfluidity was not first described/discovered by Onnes. Nobel Prize materials credit Pyotr Kapitsa with discovering that liquid helium flows without resistance in 1937, and another Nobel press release states that it was not until the end of the 1930s that Kapitsa discovered superfluidity in helium-4.
So the article overstates Onnes's role: he pioneered low-temperature physics and liquefied helium, but the first discovery/description of superfluidity is credited to Kapitsa (with Allen and Misener independently observing it as well, though the Nobel sources here specifically name Kapitsa).
2 sources
- Pyotr Kapitsa - Facts - NobelPrize.org
"Kapitsa discovered in 1937 that at very low temperatures liquid helium flows without resistance. The phenomenon became known as superfluidity."
- Press release: The 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics - NobelPrize.org
"But it was not until the end of the 1930s that Pjotr Kapitsa ... discovered experimentally the phenomenon of superfluidity in helium-4."