Johannes Diderik van der Waals (23 November 1837 – 8 March 1923) was a Dutch physicist and thermodynamicist famous for his work on an equation of state for gases and liquids.
Van der Waals was born in Leiden, Netherlands, to Jacobus van der Waals and Elisabeth van den Burg. He became a school teacher, and later was allowed to study at the university, in spite of his lack of education in the field of classical languages. He studied from 1862 to 18...
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Johannes Diderik van der Waals (23 November 1837 – 8 March 1923) was a Dutch physicist and thermodynamicist famous for his work on an equation of state for gases and liquids.
Van der Waals was born in Leiden, Netherlands, to Jacobus van der Waals and Elisabeth van den Burg. He became a school teacher, and later was allowed to study at the university, in spite of his lack of education in the field of classical languages. He studied from 1862 to 1865, earning degrees in mathematics and physics. He married Anna Magdalena Smit in 1864, and the couple had three daughters (Anne Madeleine, Jacqueline Elisabeth (poet), Johanna Diderica) and one son, the physicist Johannes Diderik, Jr. Van der Waals' nephew Peter van der Waals was a cabinet maker and a leading figure in the Sapperton, Gloucestershire school of the Arts and Crafts movement.
In 1866, van der Waals became director of a secondary school in The Hague. He obtained a doctorate in Leiden in 1873 under Pieter Rijke, and in 1876 was...
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