Hamaker

Hamaker is a Dutch surname. It is most common in the Netherlands and in regions with Dutch heritage. The name is also used in science to refer to the Hamaker constant, a material-specific parameter that describes the strength of van der Waals forces between macroscopic bodies separated by a medium. The constant arises from the Hamaker theory of intermolecular forces and is used in contexts such as colloid science, adhesion, and surface engineering.

In the nonretarded, short-distance regime for two flat bodies across a medium, the van der Waals force per unit area is commonly written as F/A ≈ -A/(6πD^3), where D is the separation and A is the Hamaker constant. The value of A depends on the dielectric properties of the two interacting media and the intervening medium, and it can be estimated by Lifshitz theory or by pairwise summations of atomic interactions.

The term is named after a Dutch physicist who studied macroscopic van der Waals interactions in the early 20th century. The Hamaker constant is widely used in fields such as colloid and interface science, lubrication, and nanotechnology to predict adhesion, coating stability, and particle aggregation.