| AdminHistory | Kurt Alfred Georg Mendelssohn (1906-1980) was born in Berlin, Germany and educated at the Goethe-Schule there and Berlin University. He began his research career under his cousin F E Simon in Berlin and Breslau. Forced to leave Germany, he came to Oxford to work at the Clarendon Laboratory at the invitation of F A Lindemann (see under Cherwell) in 1933 and was the first person to liquefy helium in Britain.
Subsequently Simon, N. Kurti and H. London came to Oxford and contributed with Mendelssohn to the establishment of the Clarendon Laboratory as an important centre of low temperature research. With the advent of the Second World War the low temperature apparatus had to be dismantled and Mendelssohn turned to various collaborative projects in medical physics.
After the war he resumed his work on low temperatures in collaboration with a succession of gifted research students, many of whom built up graduate schools of their own on leaving the Clarendon, thus making their mark in low temperature centres all over the world. In addition to his laboratory work he was closely involved with other low temperature scientists at the international level.
He was Chairman and founder member of the International Cryogenic Engineering Committee, President of Commission A2 of the International Institute of Refrigeration and founder and general editor of the journal Cryogenics. As 'extra-mural' activities he was especially interested in China, and in the sociological and engineering background of the Egyptian and Mexican pyramids, publishing and lecturing widely on these topics. |