Johannes Diderik van der Waals

Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837–1923) was a Dutch physicist who developed an equation of state that accounts for molecular volume and attraction in gases and liquids.

Van der Waals equation: An equation of state that corrects the ideal-gas law for finite molecular volume and intermolecular attraction. It is the mathematical expression most directly associated with his name.
Excluded volume: The portion of space unavailable to other particles because particles have finite size. It supplies the volume correction in the van der Waals model.
Leiden University: A Dutch research university founded in 1575 and among the oldest universities in the Netherlands. Van der Waals studied and later taught physics there.
Van der Waals forces: Weak intermolecular attractions arising from permanent, induced, or fluctuating electric dipoles. The forces share his name, though the equation’s attraction term is a simplified collective model.
Ideal gas law: A gas equation relating pressure, volume, temperature, and amount while treating particles as point-like and noninteracting. His equation modifies this simpler model to account for real molecules.
Cohesive pressure: The reduction in measured pressure caused by attractive interactions among molecules. It explains why the model raises the pressure term to compensate for molecular attraction.
Hendrik Lorentz: A Dutch physicist known for the Lorentz force, electron theory, and foundational work in electromagnetism. Lorentz succeeded van der Waals as professor of theoretical physics at Leiden.
Supercritical fluid: A substance above its critical temperature and pressure, with no distinct liquid–gas boundary. His theory helped establish the critical point as the boundary to this fluid regime.
Intermolecular force: An attractive or repulsive interaction between molecules that does not involve covalent or ionic bonding. His model represents molecular attraction through a correction to pressure.
Corresponding states principle: The principle that substances can show similar behavior when compared at matching reduced temperature and pressure. Van der Waals’s reduced variables helped reveal shared behavior among different fluids.

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