Johannes van der Waals ( 23 November 1837 - 8 March 1923 )

Van der Waals, a Dutch scientist was known for van der Waals equation of state. The van der Waals forces are the attractive and repulsive forces between molecules other than those due to covalent or ionic bonds. Generally these are intermolecular forces. These forces are important in the fields like supramolecular chemistry, structural biology, polymer science, surface science and condensed matter physics. For his work, van der Waals received the Nobel Prize in physics ( 1910)