352 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



and searching out all the necessary consequences of those princi- 

 ples, without ever introducing in the course of the reasoning any 

 new hypotheses or relaxing the rigor of the reasoning." 



Since most readers will be obliged to form their opinion of the 

 value of Gibbs' work upon authority instead of personal judgment 

 it may be useful to quote a third estimate, that given by Professor 

 Larmor in the article on "Energetics," in the supplementary 

 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica: 



"This monumental memoir made a clean sweep of the subject, 

 and workers in the modern experimental science returned to it 

 again and again to find their empirical principles forecasted in 

 the light of pure theory, and to derive fresh inspiration for new 

 departures." 



That Gibbs' paper was so long neglected, and is even at the 

 present day not studied by many chemists, is due chiefly to two 

 causes: first, it is exceedingly abstract, complex and difficult to 

 comprehend, and, second, being published in the Transactions of 

 the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, it was not readily 

 accessible to all who might have found it profitable. This memoir, 

 which is likely to be more studied a hundred years from now than 

 it is to-day, is to be found among papers on subjects of such local 

 and transitory interest as the winds of New Haven and plans for 

 a bridge, never built, between New York City and BlackwelPs 

 Island. Still we must remember that the service which the Connec- 

 ticut Academy rendered him no other agency stood ready to 

 render or could have rendered as well, under conditions permitting 

 the careful elaboration and printing of the work, and for this the 

 Academy deserves the hearty thanks of all friends of science. All 

 of his work has now been made available by the publication, in 

 1906, of The Scientific Papers of J. Willard Gibbs, in two volumes 

 by Longmans Green & Co. 



It will not be out of place to relate here an incident of his student 

 days at the University of Berlin, the humor of which did not 

 escape him then and which has certainly lost none of that quality 

 since. The conversation took place at a social gathering to which 

 he had been invited. 



