In 1904, he established a cryogenics laboratory where he exploited the Hampson–Linde cycle to investigate how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero.

In 1904 he founded a very large cryogenics laboratory and invited other researchers to the location, which made him highly regarded in the scientific community.

[6] In 1911 Kamerlingh Onnes measured the electrical conductivity of pure metals (mercury, and later tin and lead) at very low temperatures.

Some scientists, such as William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), believed that electrons flowing through a conductor would come to a complete halt or, in other words, metal resistivity would become infinitely large at absolute zero.

Others, including Kamerlingh Onnes, felt that a conductor's electrical resistance would steadily decrease and drop to nil.

[7][8] On 8 April 1911, Kamerlingh Onnes found that at 4.2 K the resistance in a solid mercury wire immersed in liquid helium suddenly vanished.

Kamerlingh Onnes received widespread recognition for his work, including the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics for (in the words of the committee) "his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium."

[citation needed] Some of the instruments Kamerlingh Onnes devised for his experiments can be seen at the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden.

The apparatus he used to first liquefy helium is on display in the lobby of the physics department at Leiden University, where the low-temperature lab is also named in his honor.

His student and successor as director of the lab Willem Hendrik Keesom was the first person who was able to solidify helium, in 1926.