JOSIAH WILLARD GIBBS 473 



admit of much ulterior development." The work of Gibbs has added 

 to it the immense field of chemical equilibrium and wherever " phases," 

 " heterogeneous systems/' " chemical and thermodynamic potentials," 

 or " critical states " are mentioned he has left his impress upon modern 

 scientific thought. It is not without reason then, that Ostwald has 

 called this mathematician " the founder of chemical energetics," as- 

 serting that " he has given new form and substance to chemistry for 

 another century at least."^^ 



Josiah Willard Gibbs was born in New Haven, Conn., on February 

 11, 1839. His father, who was descended from Sir Henry Gibbs, of 

 Honington, Warwickshire, was professor of sacred literature in Yale 

 College during the years 1821-61, and was esteemed for unusual 

 scholarship in his day. The son, like many other mathematicians, 

 showed early aptitude for linguistic as well as for mathematical studies, 

 and, entering Yale in 1854, was graduated in 1858, after winning many 

 prizes and distinctions in Latin and mathematics. He began to teach 

 mathematics and physics at Yale in 1863, having received his doctor's 

 degree in that year. During 1866-69 he traveled in Europe, studying 

 his chosen subjects at Paris, Berlin and Heidelberg, and hearing the 

 lectures of Magnus, Kirchhoff and Helmholtz. In July, 1871, two 

 years after his return, he was appointed professor of mathematical 

 physics in Yale College, about the same time that Clerk Maxwell as- 

 sumed similar duties in the Cavendish Laboratory, at Cambridge. This 

 position Professor Gibbs held until his death, April 28, 1903. Pro- 

 fessor Gibbs devoted his whole life to his work, the interests of his 

 university and his pupils, and apart from the earlier years of travel and 

 some excursions into the field of controversy, his was the quiet and 

 uneventful career of the typical man of science. During his period of 

 productive activity, 1873-1902, he made important contributions to the 

 electromagnetic theory of light, multiple algebra and vector analysis, 

 astronomy, theoretical and statistical dynamics, but his enduring fame 

 rests chiefly upon his work in thermodynamics, the science which, in 

 the words of his English biographer, he reduced " to its canonical 

 form." He was a member of most of the important scientific societies 

 of the world, was Eumford medalist of the American Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences in 1881 and in 1901, the Eoyal Society, of London, 

 conferred its highest distinction, the Copley medal, upon Professor 

 Gibbs, as being " the first to apply the second law of thermodynamics 

 to the exhaustive discussion of the relation between chemical, electrical 

 and thermal energy and capacity for external work."^* 



" The history of thermodynamics," says Maxwell, " has an especial 



"Am 28. April 1903 verschied im 64. Lebensjahre der Schopfer der chem- 



ischen Energetik, J. Willard Gibbs. Der allgemeinen Chemie hat er fur ein 



Jahrhundert Form und Gehalt gegeben." Ztschr. f. phys. Chem., 1903, XLIII., 



760. 



^* Nature, London, 1901-2, LXV., 107-8. 



