On countless occasions, I have begun a talk on some aspect of superconductivity by intoning the time‐honored sentence “Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in Leiden, just three years after he had first succeeded in liquefying helium.” Accordingly, I could hardly resist the invitation to serve as guest editor of this issue of PHYSICS TODAY, which celebrates the 75th anniversary of that historic event by highlighting some current examples of the broad impact of his discovery.

This content is only available via PDF.
You do not currently have access to this content.