Wander Johannes de Haas

In this article, we use Dutch capitalization for the tussenvoegsels in Dutch family names. The first letter in De Haas is capitalized unless it is preceded by a name, initial or title of nobility.

W. J. de Haas
De Haas in 1925
Born	(1878-03-02)2 March 1878 Lisse, Netherlands
Died	26 April 1960(1960-04-26) (aged 82) Bilthoven, Netherlands
Alma mater	University of Leiden
Known for	De Haas–Van Alphen effect Shubnikov–de Haas effect Einstein–de Haas effect
Spouse	Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz
Awards	Rumford Medal (1934)
Scientific career
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	University of Leiden TU Delft
Doctoral advisor	Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Other academic advisors	Johannes Petrus Kuenen
Doctoral students	Cornelis Jacobus Gorter Gerardus J. Sizoo
Notes
He was the husband of Geertruida Luberta Lorentz and the son-in-law of Hendrik Lorentz.

Wander Johannes de Haas (2 March 1878 – 26 April 1960) was a Dutch physicist and mathematician. He is best known for the Shubnikov–de Haas effect, the De Haas–Van Alphen effect and the Einstein–de Haas effect.

Personal life

Wander de Haas was born in Lisse, a small town near Leiden. He was the son of Albertus de Haas, principal of the Teacher's College in Middelburg, and Maria Efting. On 22 December 1910 he married physicist Geertruida Luberta Lorentz, the eldest daughter of Hendrik Lorentz. They had two daughters and two sons. He was an atheist.

Education

After attending high school in Middelburg, De Haas started paralegal studies in 1895. After completion of two of three parts of the examinations and having worked in a lawyer's office for some time, he decided to change career and become a physicist instead. After passing the qualifications exams for admission to University, he started to study physics at the University of Leiden in 1900 under Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Johannes Petrus Kuenen. He earned his doctorate in 1912, under Kamerlingh Onnes, with a thesis entitled: Measurements on the Compressibility of Hydrogen.

Career

After getting his degree, De Haas worked in Berlin as a researcher at the Physikalische Reichsanstalt. Then he returned to the Netherlands, worked as a schoolteacher in Deventer, a conservator of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, and then a physics professor in Delft Technical School and University of Groningen. In 1925, he became a professor in Leiden, and one of the two heads of the Laboratory of physics, succeeding Kamerlingh Onnes. In 1948, De Haas retired.

An example of the equipment (an electromagnet of c.1930) used for his low-temperature research can be seen in the Boerhaave Museum, the history of science museum in Leiden.

In 1922 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Twenty years later, in 1942, he was forced to resign. After World War II ended in 1945, he was allowed to rejoin as a member.

External links

• De Haas' math genealogy
• Albert van Helden, Biography, Wander Johannes de Haas 1878–1960 (Digital Library of Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences [1]). Originally published in: K. van Berkel, A. van Helden and L. Palm, ed., A History of Science in The Netherlands, Survey, Themes and Reference, pp. 454–456 (Leiden, Brill, 1999).
• Wander Johannes de Haas, 1878–1960 @ Instituut-Lorentz for theoretical physics
• J. van den Handel, Haas, Wander Johannes de (1878–1960), in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland.