xxii OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



struction in chemistry as was not then organized in this country. 

 He first spent some months with Rammelsberg in Berhn, then 

 studied for a year under Heinrich Rose, and then for some months 

 under Liebig at Giessen. Lectures by Laurent, Dumas and Reg- 

 nault marked the close of his days of travel and study, and in 1848, 

 he returned to America. Among all these great teachers, it was 

 Rose, whom he greatly admired, who seems most to have put his 

 impress on Gibbs, and it may well be that from Rose came the pre- 

 ponderant inclination towards analytical and inorganic chemistry. 

 But the young student who put himself under the instruction of the 

 great leaders of organic chemistry, and of inorganic chemistry, and 

 of theoretical chemistry and of physical chemistry, had already 

 qualities from which were easily developed the breadth of view and 

 of interest in very various kinds of research which always marked 

 Gibbs. 



He was soon appointed professor of chemistry in the New York 

 Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York. The 

 teaching required was elementary, and his activities accordingly 

 overflowed in various channels. In the year 185 1 he became asso- 

 ciate editor of Silliman's American Journal of Science, to the estab- 

 lishment of which his father had contributed. To the succeeding 

 forty-five volumes of this journal, Gibbs contributed 472 pages con- 

 taining abstracts of 605 investigations on chemical and physical 

 matters which had been published in Europe. The careful selection 

 and the clear and accurate reports of these papers were a great 

 service to American science. In 1852, Gibbs discovered a salt of 

 xanthocobalt, a new cobaltamine; which led to important work, 

 published in 1857, in collaboration with Genth. In 1861, he pub- 

 lished the first of his papers on the analytical chemistry of the 

 platinum metals. The considerable amount of the works, and espe- 

 cially the masterly ability shown in the paper on the cobalt bases, 

 put Gibbs easily in the front rank of American chemists. 



In 1863, Gibbs was appointed Rumford Professor of the Ap- 

 plication of Science to the L'^seful Arts. He was expected to lecture 

 on heat and light, and also to take charge of the chemical laboratory 

 of the Lawrence Scientific School. As this was a position in which 



