Diederik Johannes Korteweg (1848–1941) was born and raised in ’s Hertogenbosch, in the Southern Dutch province of Brabant. He carried out his high school studies at a special school preparing for the military academy. Fascinated by mathematics, however, he chose to study at the Delft Polytechnic instead, but once there, he quickly became discouraged by the technical subjects. He left the Polytechnic, and took courses of mathematics and mechanics preparing him to become a high school teacher. In a fashion typical of the great scientists of the “Second Golden Age” in Holland, he studied for the diploma that would give him access to university studies, while teaching mathematics and mechanics in high school.

During his years as a teacher, Korteweg began publishing scientific papers, and also established contact with Van der Waals. Once he passed the university admission exam in 1876, he studied mathematics for a year at the University of Utrecht, and then entered the newly founded University of Amsterdam. There his ascent was meteoric. He passed the PhD qualifying exam in January 1878, and, only half a year later, defended his doctoral thesis. His was the first doctorate granted by the young university and, for lack of a department of mathematics, physics professor Van der Waals acted as advisor and bestowed the degree. The topic of the thesis was the propagation of waves in elastic tubes. His inspiration came from physiological experiments on propagation of waves in arteries, caused by the beating heart.

In September 1881, at the age of 34, Korteweg was appointed a professor of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. The title of Korteweg’s inaugural address was “Mathematics as an Auxiliary Discipline,” and the address contained numerous examples of the role of applied mathematics in solving problems in science and statistics. Korteweg lived by his conviction that mathematics has an important role to play in science, as proved by his work in thermodynamics, kinetic theory and hydrodynamics. He is best known for the Korteweg-de Vries paper on the propagation of soliton waves in a channel, which has received strong recognition during the second half of the 20th century. Korteweg also studied the stress resulting from the density gradients at an interface between two fluids, which stress is named after him.

Korteweg was associated with Van der Waals during the years that the latter was working on the phase separation of binary mixtures. Korteweg laid the mathematical foundation for that work in his study of folds on surfaces. He was elected tot the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 1881, and to the Dutch Society of Sciences (HMW) in 1886. He voluntarily ceded his chair to his brilliant pupil, Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, in 1913.