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| Fritz Walther Meissner (or Meissner) was born on December 16, 1882, in Berlin, Germany. He studied mechanical engineering and physics at the Technical University of Berlin and did a PhD under the supervision of the great Physicist Max Planck. Between 1922 and 1925, he established the world's third largest helium-liquifier, which was also the first one in Germany. In 1933, he along with Ochsenfeld, measured the magnetic field produced by a sample of tin and discovered that when it becomes superconducting, tin expels the magnetic field from its volume. This effect (where the magnetic field is expelled from the interior of a superconductor when cooled to a temperature below Tc is called the Meissner effect. It is this effect which makes it possible for superconductors to levitate on magnets and might one day lead to magnetically levitated train using superconductors. | ||