How it began
Zygmunt Wróblewski returned to Poland in 1882 and took the Chair of Experimental Physics at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He brought modern equipment acquired in Paris, including a device for reaching low temperatures designed by Louis Cailletet. He began working with the physicist and chemist Karol Olszewski, and together they improved Cailletet's apparatus. On March 29, 1883, they condensed oxygen to a static liquid. Nitrogen followed on April 13 and carbon monoxide on April 16.
Before it existed
In 1877 Louis Cailletet and Raoul Pictet had liquefied oxygen only in a dynamic state, producing a mist that disappeared after a moment. That did not allow further study of the gases. Researchers needed a static, stable liquid on which experiments could be run, and it was widely believed that these gases did not occur in liquid form.
How it works
The modifications Wróblewski and Olszewski made to Cailletet's apparatus let it reach about minus 130 degrees Celsius, a temperature that devices of this type had not attained before. At that temperature the compressed gas condensed into a liquid that stayed in the vessel long enough to be observed and measured.
What changed first
The result made the two men recognized authorities in the study of low temperatures. They ended their collaboration a few months later and continued separately. Wróblewski determined the density of liquefied oxygen, calculated the critical constants of hydrogen and solidified carbon dioxide and alcohol, though his own attempt to condense hydrogen failed. He joined the Academy in 1883, and in 1887 the Vienna Academy gave him an award for his research.
What lasted
The experiment is remembered as a founding step in cryogenics, carried out away from the best funded research centers of the day. Wróblewski suffered severe burns in a laboratory fire on March 25, 1888, and died on April 16 at the age of 43. He is buried at Rakowicki Cemetery in Kraków.
