Bosscha’s leerboek en Van der Waals’ proefschrift: aantrekkende krachten in Den Haag

Abstract

Bosscha's textbook and Van der Waals' dissertation: attractive forces in The Hague The aim of this article is to shed some light on the genesis of Van der Waals' famous dissertation 'On the continuity of the gaseous and liquid states', published in 1873. As was pointed out in a recent biography of Van der Waals, the Dutch physicists Johannes Bosscha, at the time a secondary school inspector, was Van der Waals' main mentor during the years preceding the materialization of this work. In this period both men resided in The Hague, where Van der Waals made his living as a secondary school teacher. Some recently found letters, all dating from february 1871, testify to their mutual interest in molecular forces. The correspondence deals with the energy in the surface layer of a liquid due to these attractive forces. The immediate occasion for their concern with this topic was Bosscha's textbook in the making. The book contained an unusually extensive discussion of capillarity and other related phenomena, which were then at the focus of Bosscha's own research. Echoes of the correspondence can be found both in Bosscha's highly influential textbook and Van der Waals' dissertation.