Heinz London

Heinz London (7 November 1907 to 3 August 1970) was a German-British physicist who, together with his brother Fritz London, was a pioneer in the field of superconductivity; the London equations are named after the two brothers. He was born in Bonn into a liberal Jewish-German family. His father, Franz London, was a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn, and his mother, Luise Burger, was the daughter of a prosperous textile manufacturer. His father died of heart failure when Heinz was nine years old, and the greatest influence on his childhood was his older brother Fritz, with whom he stayed close throughout their lives. In 1933 Frederick Lindemann invited Francis Simon to join the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, and Simon brought Heinz London with him as his assistant, together with Nicholas Kurti.