Stable liquefaction of oxygen and nitrogen (Kraków)
Licuación estable del oxígeno y del nitrógeno (Cracovia)
- Date
- 1883 · confidence high
- Place
- Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
- Credited to
- Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
In April 1883, using ethylene boiling at low pressure as the coolant, the two Polish physicists obtained liquid oxygen and then nitrogen in stable, visible quantity. Before only fleeting droplets had been achieved.
Cailletet and Pictet had obtained mist or droplets of oxygen in 1877; the Kraków achievement was a stable liquid that could be observed. Olszewski and Wróblewski later disputed the division of credit.
What it led to
- liquefied gases as a field of low-temperature physics
- Dewar's liquefaction of hydrogen (1898) and Kamerlingh Onnes's of helium (1908)
- liquid air and industrial oxygen production