Mendelssohn and Superfluid Helium Film Work at the Clarendon Laboratory

Abstract

In 1933 liquid helium was only available in Leiden, Toronto, Berlin, and Breslau. No helium liquefier existed in England though building of a new laboratory which would include such a liquefier had begun in Cambridge in 1930. Oxford had nothing of this kind but in 1930, Lindemann, the professor of experimental philosophy in Oxford, ordered a hydrogen liquefier in Berlin to a design by F. Simon. On this occasion he met Simon’s assistant Kurt Mendelssohn who in late 1932 was invited to Oxford to set up small helium liquefier based on Simon’s single isentropic expansion system. Mendelssohn arrived just before Christmas, and by the 9th of January 1933 the liquefier was working. Thus Mendelssohn had brought the first helium liquefaction to England. The Cambridge Royal Society Mond Laboratory was officially opened on 3 February 1933 and Kapitza’s expansion engine liquefier was operating there by 1934.