350 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



pleased at this mark of appreciation from such a high authority, 

 although he personally took little interest in the construction of 

 such models, for to his mind they were superfluous. He did not 

 think in mathematical formulas like Maxwell or in mechanical 

 models like Kelvin, but seemed to have some peculiar method of 

 his own for conceiving complex relations between quantities. The 

 model is yet preserved in the Sloane Laboratory of Yale, the orig- 

 inal in the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge. Students, who 

 knew the story of plaster surface and Gibbs' extreme modesty, 

 used to take a secret delight in asking questions about it. He 

 would reply that "it came from Europe," and, further pressed, 

 that it was "made in England.". 



In 1876 and 1878, Professor Gibbs published in two parts in 

 the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 

 a paper entitled, "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Sub- 

 stances," to which may be accurately applied the much abused 

 term "an epoch-making work," for it laid the foundation of the 

 new science of physical chemistry. It was a triumph of creative 

 intellect, rarely equaled in the history of science for originality, 

 completeness and vigor of demonstration. It often happens in 

 science that certain discoveries are, as it were, "in the air," and 

 it is almost a matter of chance which individual catches them and 

 by first putting them into concrete form, gets the whole credit for 

 having originated them. The way of the new idea is usually so 

 throughly prepared by the gradual development of current thought 

 that its coming in some form is inevitable. America would cer- 

 tainly have been discovered within a few years if Columbus had 

 failed, and the world would not have been long without the steam- 

 engine if Watt had never lived. But Professor Gibbs' work in 

 physical chemistry was not the product of such a general trend 

 of thought. The materials of the new science had not been col- 

 lected. He laid down laws for phenomena that had not then been 

 observed, and gave in advance solutions to problems that had 

 never been formulated. It is a signal refutation of the theory of 

 Bacon that science can only progress by the slow accumulation 

 of miscellaneous facts, from which in the course of time could be 



