WILLARD GIBBS 345 



chemical reactions. When we realize the deplorable condition 

 of chemistry as a purely empirical science with its unwieldy 

 accumulation of facts, we can appreciate what a service to the 

 science has been his genius for generalization and mathematical 

 deduction. 



To devotees one life to abstract studies in which the world at 

 large can see no practical value requires not only an exceptional 

 tenacity of purpose and the sacrifice of personal aims on the part 

 of the individual, but also that he be exceptionally situated in 

 order that his mind may be free from cares and distractions which 

 would interfere with the necessary concentration and continuity 

 of thought. Willard Gibbs was the right man in the right place. 

 His life, training and circumstances were the best possible for the 

 perfect development of his peculiar genius. He had the best 

 education that America and Europe could give him, and a perma- 

 nent position in Yale University which required of him merely 

 the teaching of four or five advanced students in his own field of 

 work. Although he received little support from the college, 

 he inherited a modest competence, sufficient to provide for his quiet 

 tastes and keep him from uncongenial occupations. For his 

 research he required no large and expensive laboratory. The only 

 apparatus he needed was pencil and paper, and a small upper 

 room in the corner of the Sloane Physical Laboratory was his 

 workshop. Here until late at night he continued year after year 

 his solitary search for truth for its own sake, without any of those 

 external stimuli such as the hope of fame or fortune or the pressure 

 of necessity which most men need to spur them to such arduous 

 exertion. 



Four hundred paces north of this on High Street stands a plain 

 square brick house with the two wooden Ionic pillars characteristic 

 of many New Haven houses. Here in his sister's family he made 

 his home and between these two points he walked daily with as 

 much regularity as Kant at Konigsburg. Except for his student 

 years in Europe and occasional summer vacations in the moun- 

 tains, his life was practically confined to this narrow range. 



Josiah Willard Gibbs was the fifth to bear that name which 



