Gustav de Vries's name is well known to mathematicians because of the work of his doctoral dissertation which contained the Korteweg-de Vries equation. However, few know anything else about de Vries.
De Vries studied at the University of Amsterdam where he was taught by the professor of physics Johannes Diederik van der Waals and the professor of mathematics Diederik Johannes Korteweg. He was also taught by Julius and Pesch. After completing his undergraduate studies, de Vries worked for a doctorate under Korteweg's supervision. He earned sufficient money to make this possible by teaching at the Koninklijke Militaire Academie (Royal Military Academy, Netherlands) during 1892-1893. The Academy, located in the castle of Breda, trained officers of the Dutch Army and had not been operating for long when de Vries began to teach there. In the following academic year, 1893-1894, de Vries again taught at a military school, this time at the Cadet School at Alkmaar.
On 1 December 1894 de Vries had an oral examination on his thesis Bijdrage tot de kennis der lange golven which contained the famous Korteweg-de Vries equation. The results of this thesis were written up for publication in a paper authored jointly by Korteweg and de Vries On the Change of Form of Long Waves advancing in a Rectangular Canal and on a New Type of Long Stationary Waves published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1895. They found explicit, closed-form, travelling-wave solutions to the Korteweg - de Vries equation that decay rapidly. These waves take the form of one or several waves propagating with a velocity which is proportional to their amplitude. The larger waves, therefore, will overtake the smaller waves and when the collision occurs the larger wave moves through the smaller to become the leading wave, yet neither of the waves changes form during the interaction.
In fact the naturalist John Scott Russell had claimed to have observed solitary waves in 1844, yet several prominent mathematicians, including Stokes, were convinced they could not exist. Korteweg and de Vries proved Russell was right and produced the necessary mathematical justification. We now know that this work by Korteweg and de Vries is extremely important, but sadly this was not recognised at the time and it was over 70 years before this fundamental research led to the rapidly expanding research topic of 'solitons'.
In fact de Vries published two further papers in the 1890's but these three papers are his complete publication list. He did not obtain a post in a university, but rather in the same year as he defended his thesis, he took up a position as a high school teacher of mathematics at the HBS/Handelsschool, the trade school in Haarlem. He taught there until he retired in 1931, when he reached the age of 65.
De Vries was married to Johanna Boelen, who taught French language and literature; they had five children.
In April 1995 an International Symposium was held in Amsterdam:-
... to commemorate the centennial of the equation by and named after Korteweg and de Vries.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
August 2006