1901 2010
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The Nobel Prize in Physics 1910
Johannes Diderik van der Waals
Biography
Johannes Diderik van der Waals
was born on November 23, 1837 in Leyden, The Netherlands, the son
of Jacobus van der Waals and Elisabeth van den Burg. After having
finished elementary education at his birthplace he became a
schoolteacher. Although he had no knowledge of classical
languages, and thus was not allowed to take academic
examinations, he continued studying at Leyden University in his
spare time during 1862-65. In this way he also obtained teaching
certificates in mathematics and physics.
In 1864 he was appointed teacher at a secondary school at
Deventer; in 1866 he moved to The Hague, first as teacher and
later as Director of one of the secondary schools in that
town.
New legislation whereby university students in science were
exempted from the conditions concerning prior classical education
enabled Van der Waals to sit for university examinations. In 1873
he obtained his doctor's degree for a thesis entitled Over de
Continuïteit van den Gas - en Vloeistoftoestand (On the
continuity of the gas and liquid state), which put him at once in
the foremost rank of physicists. In this thesis he put forward an
"Equation of State" embracing both the gaseous and the liquid
state; he could demonstrate that these two states of aggregation
not only merge into each other in a continuous manner, but that
they are in fact of the same nature. The importance of this
conclusion from Van der Waals' very first paper can be judged
from the remarks made by James Clerk Maxwell in Nature, "that
there can be no doubt that the name of Van der Waals will soon be
among the foremost in molecular science" and "It has certainly
directed the attention of more than one inquirer to the study of
the Low-Dutch language in which it is written" (Maxwell probably
meant to say "Low-German", which would also be incorrect, since
Dutch is a language in its own right). Subsequently, numerous
papers on this and related subjects were published in the
Proceedings of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences
and in the Archives Néerlandaises, and they were also
translated into other languages.
When, in 1876, the new Law on Higher Education was established
which promoted the old Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam to
university status, Van der Waals was appointed the first
Professor of Physics. Together with Van't Hoff and Hugo de
Vries, the geneticist, he contributed to the fame of the
University, and remained faithful to it until his retirement, in
spite of enticing invitations from elsewhere.
The immediate cause of Van der Waals' interest in the subject of
his thesis was R. Clausius' treatise considering heat as a
phenomenon of motion, which led him to look for an explanation
for T. Andrews' experiments (1869) revealing the existence of
"critical temperatures " in gases. It was Van der Waals' genius
that made him see the necessity of taking into account the
volumes of molecules and the intermolecular forces ("Van der
Waals forces", as they are now generally called) in establishing
the relationship between the pressure, volume and temperature of
gases and liquids.
A second great discovery - arrived at after much arduous work -
was published in 1880, when he enunciated the Law of
Corresponding States. This showed that if pressure is expressed
as a simple function of the critical pressure, volume as one of
the critical volume, and temperature as one of the critical
temperature, a general form of the equation of state is obtained
which is applicable to all substances, since the three constants
a, b, and R in the equation, which can be
expressed in the critical quantities of a particular substance,
will disappear. It was this law which served as a guide during
experiments which ultimately led to the liquefaction of hydrogen
by J. Dewar in 1898 and of helium by H. Kamerlingh Onnes in 1908. The latter,
who in 1913 received the Nobel Prize for his low-temperature
studies and his production of liquid helium, wrote in 1910 "that
Van der Waals' studies have always been considered as a magic
wand for carrying out experiments and that the Cryogenic
Laboratory at Leyden has developed under the influence of his
theories ".
Ten years later, in 1890, the first treatise on the "Theory of
Binary Solutions" appeared in the Archives
Néerlandaises - another great achievement of Van der
Waals. By relating his equation of state with the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, in the form first proposed by W. Gibbs in his
treatises on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances, he was
able to arrive at a graphical representation of his mathematical
formulations in the form of a surface which he called
"Psi-surface" in honour of Gibbs, who had chosen the Greek letter
Psi as a symbol for the free energy, which he realised was
significant for the equilibrium. The theory of binary mixtures
gave rise to numerous series of experiments, one of the first
being carried out by J. P. Kuenen, who found characteristics of
critical phenomena fully predictable by the theory. Lectures on
this subject were subsequently assembled in the Lehrbuch der
Thermodynamik (Textbook of thermodynamics) by Van der Waals
and Ph. Kohnstamm.
Mention should also be made of Van der Waals' thermodynamic
theory of capillarity, which in its basic form first appeared in
1893. In this, he accepted the existence of a gradual, though
very rapid, change of density at the boundary layer between
liquid and vapour - a view which differed from that of Gibbs, who
assumed a sudden transition of the density of the fluid into that
of the vapour. In contrast to Laplace, who had earlier formed a
theory on these phenomena, Van der Waals also held the view that
the molecules are in permanent, rapid motion. Experiments with
regard to phenomena in the vicinity of the critical temperature
decided in favour of Van der Waals' concepts.
Van der Waals was the recipient of numerous honours and
distinctions, of which the following should be particularly
mentioned. He received an honorary doctorate of the University of
Cambridge; was made honorary member of the Imperial Society of
Naturalists of Moscow, the Royal Irish Academy and the American
Philosophical Society; corresponding member of the Institut de
France and the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin; associate
member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium; and foreign
member of the Chemical Society of London, the National Academy of
Sciences of the U.S.A., and of the Accademia dei Lincei of
Rome.
In 1864, Van der Waals married Anna Magdalena Smit, who died
early. He never married again. They had three daughters and one
son. The daughters were Anne Madeleine who, after her mother's
early death, ran the house and looked after her father;
Jacqueline Elisabeth, who was a teacher of history and a
well-known poetess; and Johanna Diderica, who was a teacher of
English. The son, Johannes Diderik Jr., was Professor of Physics
at Groningen University 1903-08, and subsequently succeeded his
father in the Physics Chair of the University of Amsterdam.
Van der Waals' main recreations were walking, particularly in the
country, and reading. He died in Amsterdam on March 8, 1923.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1910
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