Van der Waerden studied at U Amsterdam and U Göttingen, joining the faculty at Göttingen in 1928. In 1931 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at U Leipzig. After the Second World War he briefly held posts at Johns Hopkins U and U Amsterdam, before moving in 1951 to Zürich U. His non-parametric test for the equality of two populations was published in 1952.

http://www.ams.org/notices/199703/interview.pdf Fuller biography, interview, and photographs.