This book narrates the story of pioneering scientists in the Netherlands, who reached a profound and comprehensive understanding of fluid mixture criticality and phase separation within a brief time span around the end of the nineteenth century. This achievement was the consequence of the felicitous collaboration of two Dutch physicists and Nobel prize winners, Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923) at the University of Amsterdam, and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) at the University of Leiden.

Processes of mixing and separation of fluids, underlying almost all production methods in the chemical industry, can be surprisingly complex. Throughout most of the 19th century, the mechanism of phase separation of pressurized fluid mixture remained a mystery. In 1890, Van der Waals, by generalizing his famous equation of state to fluid mixtures, brought Gibbs's abstract thermodynamics to practical application. The Amsterdam mathematician Korteweg provided the mathematical underpinnings.

Van der Waals' mixture equation inspired a major experimental effort by Kamerlingh Onnes and his collaborators Kuenen, Keesom, and Verschaffelt. They discovered various types of binary fluid phase separation; the Amsterdam chemist Van Laar classified these by means of the Van der Waals equation. Between 1890 and 1906, the Dutch School reached an understanding of phase behavior and criticality of fluid mixtures that was far ahead of its time. Much of their work would be rediscovered or resumed only in the second half of the twentieth century, when research on liquids and critical phenomena flourished anew.

This book is organized by topics, such as the law of corresponding states and its relevance to gas liquefaction, fluid criticality and the controversies surrounding it, and the various types of binary fluid phase behavior. Each topic is treated in some depth, including the scientific questions, the methodology, and the connection to modern work. The book contains plentiful bibliographical references, as well as biographical information. A closing chapter traces the intellectual impact of the Dutch School on modern science and technology.

This title is the fourth volume in the series Geschiedenis van de wetenschap in Nederland / The history of science and scholarship in the Netherlands

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