WILLARD GIBBS 351 



drawn general laws. On the contrary, it has been found that a 

 science develops the most rapidly when, even in its infancy, there 

 is a definite theory capable, to use Gibbs' phrase, of " giving shape 

 to research." 



As has been said, Professor Gibbs had no direct forerunner; it 

 is also true that he had no immediate followers. For over ten 

 years this paper was almost completely neglected, and it was not 

 until some of the laws he enunciated had been independently 

 discovered by European chemists, that attention was drawn to 

 it, not by himself to establish a barren claim to priority, but 

 by others because in his work these empirical laws were to be 

 found more succinctly expressed, and also logically connected 

 in a complete and consistent system of general principles. 



The paper "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances" 

 was translated into German by Ostwald in 1892, sixteen years 

 after the publication of the first part, and put into French by Le 

 Chatelier in 1899; in both instances for the expressed purpose of 

 promoting the development of the science of physical chemistry 

 in which they were the teachers. Ostwald introduces the paper 

 with these words: 



"The contents of this work are to-day of immediate importance 

 and the interest it arouses is by no means historical. For, of the 

 almost boundless wealth of results which it contains, or to which 

 it points the way, only a small part has, up to the present time, 

 been made, fruitful. Untouched treasures in the greatest variety 

 and of the greatest importance to the theoretical as well as to the 

 experimental investigator still lie within its pages." 



Le Chatelier uses much the same language: 



"Gibbs was able by a truly extraordinary effort of the scientific 

 imagination and logical power to posit all the principles of the new 

 science and to foresee all its ulterior applications. . . . To Gibbs 

 belongs the honor of having fused the two sciences into one, chemi- 

 cal mechanics, of having constituted a completely defined body of 

 principles, to which additions may be made in the future, but from 

 which the progress of the science can take nothing away. 



"His method, like that of Newton, Fresnel and Ampere, consists 

 in starting with a small number of first principles or hypotheses, 



