Dr. Van Oss came to Buffalo in 1968 as an associate professor of microbiology and head of the Immunochemistry Laboratory at UB, becoming a full professor in 1972. In 1980, he was appointed an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UB, and in 1995 he also became an adjunct professor in UB’s Geology Department. He was a member of the Ernest Witebsky Center for Immunology at UB and held visiting positions at the Central Laboratory of the Netherlands Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service at Amsterdam and the University of Bristol in England.

Dr. Van Oss was editor of three scientific journals, two of which he founded, and editor of four academic journal series in book form. Fluent in Dutch, French, English and German, with a working knowledge of Latin and Greek, he was author, co-author or editor of 11 scientific books in three languages and published more than 360 scientific papers and chapters. Awarded 14 grants as a researcher, he was world-renowned as an expert in negative van der Waals forces, the repulsion of molecules from each other in gases and liquids. A contributor to a method for calculating surface tension, an equation was named after him. He held four U.S. and French patents and was active as an author, professor, and researcher until he was 89.