882 WOLCOTT GIBBS. 



saw him employed upon a careful study of the platinum metals, upon 

 which he was engaged when he accepted the call to Cambridge in 

 1863. Shortly afterward (1865) he published for the first time a 

 description of his use of the voltaic current for depositing copper and 

 nickel in such a manner that the deposited metals could be directly 

 weighed — thus providing a simple and exact quantitative method for 

 the analysis of substances containing these metals. His sand-filtering 

 device of 1867 may be said to have been a forerunner of the present 

 admirable apparatus perfected by Gooch and Munroe. 



Not long after coming to Harvard, Gibbs turned his attention to 

 the precise use of the spectrometer in chemical investigation, and this 

 work was continued in 1869. In succeeding years he attacked the 

 complex inorganic acids, composed of various combinations of tungstic, 

 molybdic, phosphoric, arsenic, antimonic and vanadic acids. 



From inorganic chemistry he later turned for a short time to a very 

 diiferent subject, undertaking with H. A. Hare and E. T. Reichert, 

 a systematic study of the action of definitely related chemical com- 

 pounds upon animals. This research, which appeared in 1889 to 

 1894, together with occasional previous papers upon organic chemistry, 

 afforded evidence of the breadth of his interest. 



Although Wolcott Gibbs was essentially an experimentalist, he 

 was one of the first of American chemists to appreciate the importance 

 of thermodynamics. His influence was the prime factor in having 

 caused the award of the Rumford medal to J. Willard Gibbs as early 

 as 1880, long before the world at large appreciated the fundamental 

 character of the work of the Yale physicist. 



His contributions to Science were recognized in America by his 

 election to the presidencies of the National Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science; and abroad he was honored by honorary membership in the 

 German Chemical Society and corresponding membership in the 

 Royal Prussian Academy. His enthusiastic spirit, his tireless energy, 

 his generous recognition of everything good, and his warm human 

 friendship endeared him to all who knew him. The Wolcott Gibbs 

 Memorial Laboratory of Harvard University, one of the most im- 

 portant monuments ever erected in memory of a chemist, will serve 

 posterity as a lasting reminder of his many-sided eminence. 



Theodore W. Richards. 



