Died 28 February 2016 | ||
Jan van der Merwe (28 February 1922 (Humpata, Angola) – 28 February 2016 (South Africa)) was a South African physicist. The Frank-Van der Merwe crystal growth model carries his name and he has been awarded with a large number of South African academic prizes. He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of Epitaxy".
Van der Merwe was born to Dorslandtrekkers (Afrikaner farmer-settlers) in Angola, but he and his family moved to Namibia shortly afterwards, in 1928. After a BSc in engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, he continued with a MSc in applied mathematics, which he completed in 1945. Between 1947 and 1949, Van der Merwe did a Phd in University of Bristol. It was in Bristol that he started working intercrystalline boundaries, together with Charles Frank. Eventually they started researching epitaxy, and in 1949 they presented the fruits of their research in a series of scientific papers.