WAALS, JOHANNES DIDERIK VAN DER, SR.

(1837–1923)

Physicist. After teaching in a public school and a high school, van der Waals studied physics and mathematics at Leiden University from 1862 to 1865. In 1873, he acquired his doctoral degree with a thesis—reviewed favorably by British physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)—that explained the phenomenon discovered by Thomas Andrews (1813–1885) in 1869 of the critical temperature of gases. Van der Waals was appointed professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam in 1877. After 1881, he developed several fundamental “laws” on gases and liquids. In 1910, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics.

See also Science.