WILLARD GIBBS 347 



In 1854 he entered Yale College, where he distinguished himself 

 by his proficiency in Latin and Mathematics, and maintained 

 high standing in all his classes. In his Sophomore year he took 

 the Berkeley Premium for Latin Composition; in his Junior year 

 the Bristed Scholarship, the Third Prize for Latin Examination 

 and the Berkeley Premium again; in his Senior year the Clark 

 Scholarship, the De Forest Mathematical Prize and Latin Ora- 

 tion. He was also elected for excellence in scholarship to the Phi 

 Beta Kappa Society. 



After his graduation from Yale College in 1858, he remained for 

 five years in New Haven, doing graduate work in physics and 

 mathematics, for which he received the degree of M.A. in 1861 

 and Ph.D. in 1863. He was then made tutor in Latin and "Natu- 

 ral Philosophy," but the task of keeping large classes of Sopho- 

 mores in order and getting hard work out of them was not one for 

 which such a shy and modest young man was suited, and after 

 three years of somewhat discouraging effort, he went abroad 

 to continue his studies in mathematical physics. He had lost his 

 father in 1861, three years after graduation. 



His first winter was spent in Paris, and in 1867 he went to 

 Berlin to study under Magnus. The winter of 1868-69 was spent 

 in Heidelberg under Helmholtz and Kirchhoff, and in March he 

 went to the Riviera for a few weeks and returned to America in 

 June, merely passing through Paris on the way. Most of all his 

 teachers he was influenced by Clausius, the great German physi- 

 cist, and one of the founders of the science of thermodynamics. 

 In this field, by extending the fundamental laws of heat and me- 

 chanical energy discovered by Sadi Carnot and Clausius to the 

 most varied departments of physics and chemistry, Gibbs made 

 his chief contributions to human knowledge. He expressed his 

 admiration for Clausius in an obituary notice contributed to the 

 American Academy of Science and Art. Clausius' conception of 

 entropy was by him raised to the rank one of the most important 

 of physical properties, and at the head of his principal paper, 

 like a scriptural text, appears the law of Clausius: "The entropy 

 of the world tends to a maximum." 



