Education and early career Van der Waerden learned advanced mathematics at the
University of Amsterdam and the
University of Göttingen, from 1919 until 1926. He was much influenced by
Emmy Noether at
Göttingen,
Germany. Amsterdam awarded him a Ph.D. for a thesis on
algebraic geometry, supervised by Hendrick de Vries. Göttingen awarded him the
habilitation in 1928. In that year, at the age of 25, he accepted a professorship at the
University of Groningen. At 27, Van der Waerden published his
Moderne Algebra, an influential two-volume treatise on
abstract algebra, still cited, and perhaps the first treatise to treat the subject as a comprehensive whole. This work systematized an ample body of research by
Emmy Noether,
David Hilbert,
Richard Dedekind, and
Emil Artin. In the following year, 1931, he was appointed professor at the
University of Leipzig. In July 1929, he married Camilla Juliana Anna Rellich, the sister of mathematician
Franz Rellich. They had three children.
Nazi Germany After the
Nazis seized power, and through
World War II, Van der Waerden remained at Leipzig, and passed up opportunities to leave Nazi Germany for
Princeton and
Utrecht. However, he was critical of the Nazis and refused to give up his Dutch nationality, both of which led to difficulties for him.
Postwar career Following the war, Van der Waerden was repatriated to the Netherlands rather than returning to
Leipzig (then under Soviet control), but struggled to find a position in the Dutch academic system, in part because his time in Germany made his politics suspect and in part due to
Brouwer's opposition to Hilbert's school of mathematics. After a year visiting
Johns Hopkins University and two years as a part-time professor, in 1950, Van der Waerden filled the chair in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. In 1951, he moved to the
University of Zurich, where he spent the rest of his career, supervising more than 40
Ph.D. students. In 1949, Van der Waerden became member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1951 this was changed to a foreign membership. In 1973 he received the
Pour le Mérite. ==Contributions==