Uses of Superconductivity in Medical Science

Brief History of Superconductivity

    The beginnings of superconductivity can be traced back to the research done by scientist Kammerling Onnes in the year 1911. Onnes, while serving a professorship of physics at the University of Leiden (in the Netherlands), was studying the electrical properties of pure metals at low temperatures (near zero degrees Kelvin) using another recently discovered phenomenon, liquefied helieum. He found that when he immersed the metals (mercury, for historical purposes) the electrical resistivity for the metal suddenly dropped to zero. This was not what was expected, neither by Onnes nor his peers at the time, and was thus the discovery of the phenomenon known as superconductivity.