Johannes Diderik van der Waals received his doctorate in physics from the University of Leiden at the relatively late age of thirty-six. His doctoral dissertation, "On the Continuity of Gaseous and Liquid States," quickly became known among his colleagues and made his reputation almost immediately. The Nobel Prize in physics, awarded him in 1910, recognized the line of work begun in his dissertation, eventually resulting in a famous equation of state relating the pressure, volume, and temperature of a gas . He also demonstrated why a gas cannot be liquified above its critical temperature. Van der Waals also investigated the weak nonchemical bond forces between molecules that now carry the name van der Waals forces.

Van der Waals was born in Leiden in the Netherlands on November 23, 1837. His parents were Jacobus van der Waals, a carpenter, and the former Elisabeth van den Burg. Van der Waals attended local primary and...