Heinz London

Heinz London ( born November 7, 1907 in Bonn, † August 3, 1970 in Oxford ) was a German - British physicist.

Heinz London came from a wealthy upper-class German - Jewish family. His father Franz London was professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn and his mother Louise, born in Hamburg came from a textile entrepreneur family. The father died of a heart ailment when Heinz was 9 years old. Heinz grew then on under the strong influence of his seven years older brother Fritz. Time of their lives kept the two brothers to each other close contact, also known as Fritz in America and Heinz lived in England. Heinz studied from 1926-27 at the University of Bonn, after he completed a half year internship in the chemical factory toilet Heraeus in Hanau, followed by years of study at the Technische Hochschule Berlin -Charlottenburg (today the Technical University of Berlin) until 1929 and the University of Munich until 1931. Starting in 1931 he worked in Breslau in the working group by Franz Eugen Simon, which refers to the investigation superconductivity had specialized. After the seizure he was forced to emigrate as a further academic career in Germany was no longer possible. He moved to the completion of his doctoral work in Breslau in 1934 to Oxford where even his brother Fritz and Eugen Simon had with some of his employees at the Clarendon Laboratory, found a new place of work. Oxford became the first Center for Low Temperature Physics in the United Kingdom. Starting in 1936, then worked at the Heinz H. H. Wills Laroratory in Bristol, while his brother Fritz initially went to the Institute Henri Poincaré in Paris and later at the University of Durham / New Jersey. After the outbreak of war Heinz London in 1940 initially for some time on the Isle of Man interned as " Enemy Aliens ", but then released to continue working under the British nuclear program. In 1942, he received British citizenship.

Heinz London, developed jointly with his brother Fritz London a phenomenological interpretation of superconductivity, which helped with the help of quantum mechanics to a better understanding of chemical observations.

From him the idea of ​​3He - 4He mixture cooling dates (Dilution Refrigerator ) to achieve low temperatures, Kamerlingh - Onnes first applied at the laboratory in Leiden in 1964.

In 1961 he became a member ( Fellow ) of the Royal Society. Heinz London, who had been a lifelong heavy smoker, died in 1970 of a lung cancer.