134 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
in 1841. In his junior year he published a paper on a new kind 
of galvanic battery in which carbon was used, probably for the 
first time, as the inactive plate. 
Though never practicing medicine, Gibbs obtained a diploma 
from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, in 
1845, having previously been associated with Professor Robert 
Hare in his laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. To 
perfect his training in chemistry, Dr. Gibbs spent some time in 
Berlin, at Giessen, and in Paris, and among his teachers Hein- 
rich Rose probably stands foremost in the influence which he 
had in turning Gibbs’ attention toward analytical and inorganic 
chemistry. 
After his return to America, Dr. Gibbs served as Professor 
of Chemistry in the Free Academy, now the College of the 
City of New York, for 14 years. Much of his time was given to 
research work, and in 1857, in connection with Genth, Dr. Gibbs 
published an important memoir on the ammonia-cobalt bases, 
which brought him prominently to the notice of the scientific 
world. 
He became associate editor of the American Journal of 
Science in 1851, and furnished abstracts amounting to 500 pages 
to that periodical. In 1861 he published his researches on the 
platinum metals, which established his reputation as a chemist. 
In 1863 he was called to the Rumford professorship at 
Harvard University. Besides lecturing on heat and light, Pro- 
fessor Gibbs had charge of the chemical laboratory in the 
Lawrence Scientific School. Associated in this school with 
Agassiz, Gray, Wyman, Peirce and Cooke, he carried on 
research work for eight years, at the same time supervising the 
work of the post-graduate students whose investigations were 
undertaken on their own initiative, with only a final examination 
for the bachelor’s degree, after the pattern of the German schools, 
whose methods, through the influence of Gibbs, were thus intro- 
duced into the United States. 
After the consolidation of the Scientific School with the 
College at Harvard, Professor Gibbs retained only the Rum- 
