xxiv OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



teacher a clear conception of the true standing of each man. The fewness 

 of the pupils was a distinct advantage, for all worked together in one room, 

 beginners and research students often side by side. The result was that 

 they learned much from one another, and there were many discussions 

 among them over the chemical problems of the day. The men were taught 

 to think for themselves, laying thereby a foundation for professional success 

 which was pretty substantial. The course of instruction ' had no definite 

 term of years prescribed for it, and graduation came whenever the individual 

 had done the required amount of work, and submitted an acceptable original 

 thesis. The final examination was usually oral, each man alone with his 

 teacher, and was conducted in an easy conversational way which tended to 

 establish the confidence of the candidate from the very beginning. In my 

 own case, I remember that the questions covered a fairly broad range of 

 chemical topics, and at the end of it. Dr. Gibbs drew me into a sort of dis- 

 cussion or argument with him over the then modern doctrine of valence. 

 I now see that his purpose was not merely to ascertain what I had read 

 on the subject, but what I really thought about it, if indeed I was entitled 

 to think at all. Gibbs invariably treated his students, not as so many vessels 

 into which knowledge was to be poured, but as reasonable beings, with 

 definite purposes, to whom his help must be given. The research work in 

 which the advanced students shared, and for which they received public 

 credit, served to teach them that chemistry was a living and growing sub- 

 ject, and to train them in the art of solving unsolved problems. 



What was there at all unusual in his teaching? Nothing, perhaps, from 

 a modern point of view, but much that was new in America in the middle 

 sixties. It was Gibbs's merit that he, more than any other one man, intro- 

 duced into the United States the German conception of research as a means 

 of chemical instruction, a conception which is now taken as a matter of 

 course without thought of its origin. Gibbs worked with small resources 

 and with no help from the outside ; he was a reformer who never preached 

 reform ; his students rarely suspected that they were doing anything out of 

 the ordinary; but they had the utmost confidence in their master, and took 

 it for granted that his methods were sound. . . . The success of his students 

 is perhaps the best monument to his memory. 



In 1 87 1, the chemical instruction in the Lawrence Scientific 

 School was consolidated with that in Harvard College. This 

 elicited vigorous protests from leading scientific journals, from scien- 

 tific men, and from Professor Gibbs himself, but to no purpose. 

 His duties henceforth were limited to his lectures on the spectro- 

 scope and on thermodynamics. He no longer had a laboratory in 

 which to work, nor students, some of whom could assist in his 

 researches. Contact with a great teacher was no longer a source 

 of inspiration to students ready to profit by it. He himself had 



