1900-1954

German-born American physicist who, with Walter Heitler, devised the first quantum mechanical treatment of covalent bonding in hydrogen molecules. London and R. Eisenschitz employed quantum mechanics to calculate the force between atoms, known as the "dispersion force." During the 1930s, London and his brother, Heinz, developed the phenomenological theory of superconductivity (the phenomena in which super-cooled substances lose all electrical resistance). London's research from 1938 on focused on superfluidity (fluid flow without resistance).