Akademik

In 1933 Meissner, in collaboration with R. Oschenfeld, discovered what has since been known as the Meissner effect. He was examining the magnetic properties of materials as they became superconductive, a condition met with as the temperature of the element or compound falls below a critical point, T_c. It was found, quite unexpectedly, that if a solid lead sphere is placed in a magnetic field and the temperature allowed to fall below the T_cof lead, the magnetic field is expelled from the lead sphere, which becomes perfectly diamagnetic. The presence of the Meissner effect is now used as a routine test for superconductivity.