Professor Johannes Diderik van der Waals HonFSAScot

Abstract

Professor Diderik van der Waals was born in Amsterdam in 1925. He grew up in a family with four brothers and sisters in the big city, but the weekends they often spent in Boeschoten, a farming estate on the Veluwe in the central Netherlands owned by his grandfather and later by his mother, C E van der Waals-Nachenius. His mother inspired the family with a love of nature and landscape, but also with interest in and support for other people, for instance the farming families on the estate.