Introduction

In 2011 the world celebrated the centennial of an amazing discovery: superconductivity, where an electrical current can flow almost without resistance. ¹ While seeking to prove Johannes van der Waals’s thermodynamic theories, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes stumbled upon superconductivity in April 1911. It was the unexpected outcome of his team’s meticulous efforts and ingenuity in being the first to liquefy helium gas. For that work he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1913 (van Delft, 2007). At the time, helium, which had only been discovered on Earth in 1895, was extremely scarce and was found only in a few rare earth minerals such as monazite and cleveite.