Born into a poor family in Holland, van der Waals was the son of a carpenter. As a young adult, he began teaching elementary school to support himself while training for secondary-level teaching. While working as a headmaster, or school principal, he enrolled at Leiden University, where he studied physics. In 1873, van der Waals completed his doctoral thesis, which was recognized immediately for its insight into behavior of gases. Although little was known at the time about the structure of molecules, van der Waals's dissertation accurately described the molecular forces that dictate gas behavior.

In his essay van der Waals successfully explained, in fairly simple mathematical terms, why gases begin to act unpredictably at extreme temperatures and pressures. Earlier, scientists had learned that a few simple rules govern gas behavior under most conditions. These so-called gas laws, developed by Robert Boyle in the late 1600s and Joseph Louis...