Handwritten lecture notes from Limburg-born student Jan Willem Peeters (1862-1934). He studied physics and chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, and attended lectures from Dutch physicist Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923), known for his research into gases and liquids. Van der Waals received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1910.
The lecture notes are unique. The only other known lecture notes by Van der Waals were written a few years later by W.P. Jorissen (1869-1959), but these concern the theoretical physics lectures and not experimental physics. Jorissen received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1896 and became a lecturer in inorganic and physical chemistry at the University of Leiden from 1908 to 1940.
Maastricht University’s Special Collections hold a second manuscript with lecture notes by Jan Willem Peeters from the same period: Scheikunde pract. Werk. Peeters would later become canon of the Cathedral Chapter and director of the Episcopal College in Roermond.
Books and scientific reports, as well as some journals, obtained by Maastricht physicist and Nobel prize winner Peter Debye after his arrival in the United States, early 1940.
