OLIVER WOLCOTT GIBBS. xxix 



in its numerous acids. Then were described complex acids with 

 not two but three acid radicals in the complex, like that of the 

 stannophosphotungstates. Next, other elements like platinum, 

 selenium, tellurium, cerium, uranium, were drawn into like complex 

 acids. On salt, phosphovanadiovanadicotungstate of barium, 

 60WO3, 3P2O5, V2O5, VO2, i8BaO, i5oH„0, had an atomic weight 

 of 20,066 and a complication the interpretation of which seems 

 almost incredibly difficult. Salts of over fifty such complex acids 

 were described, and all this immense volume of work was accom- 

 plished in a small private laboratory with only one assistant. 



In his address as president of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science in 1898, Gibbs spoke on the complex in- 

 organic acids. That the views then presented were final was not 

 to be expected. Even to establish a simple matter like the com- 

 position of water, expressed in three characters, required, if we may 

 agree with Kopp, no less than the joint efforts of three men. In 

 the case which we have to consider, one man was working alone in a 

 wilderness to be compared, both for extent and for complexity, not 

 to a simple problem in inorganic chemistry, but to some great sec- 

 tion of organic chemistry. But though working alone, he mapped 

 out the wilderness so that he who will may now survey it at his 

 ease. We are now in possession of methods which would have 

 been of great service in this reconnoissance, had they been de- 

 veloped early enough. The cryoscopic or the ebullioscopic method 

 of determining molecular weights would have helped to ascertain 

 whether a given body was a compound of a basic radical with a 

 single complex acid radical or with two simple acid radicals. Elec- 

 trical methods might have assisted in ascertaining the composition 

 of a complex ion. But these methods by means of which physical 

 chemistry has made so great conquests were not ready to be used 

 when Gibbs worked, and, accordingly, his survey does not include 

 some facts and some conclusions which they might establish. So 

 Newton had no spectroscope to use. But that the work of Gibbs 

 was less valuable for this reason, few chemists would be willing to 

 admit. He put before us a great and difficult problem and he did, 

 towards its solution, more than almost any other man could have 

 done. 



