360 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



matics. But Gibbs replied: "What is the good of that? It is 

 complete as it is." 



He had such confidence in the results of his theoretical deduc- 

 tions that he took little interest personally in their experimental 

 verification, yet he was fertile in suggestions of profitable lines of 

 research, and had a keen perception of practical difficulties which 

 would be encountered. In his lectures he not infrequently would 

 spend considerable time in describing the apparatus by which some 

 crucial experiment might be performed. Though he was so exclu- 

 sively occupied with the theoretical side of his subject, he was by 

 no means wanting in mechanical ingenuity. As a boy his favorite 

 amusement was the making of mechanical toys, and after leaving 

 college and before entering on his professional work he devised 

 and patented an automatic car-brake. 



It must be noted also that all his work, even the most abstract, 

 had a definite practical purpose. He studied mathematics for 

 its usefulness in the interpretation of nature, never as a mere 

 mental amusement nor for the exercise and display of intellectual 

 power. As he once remarked in a discussion at the Mathematical 

 Club, "A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a 

 physicist must be at least partially sane." In an address on 

 "Values" on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 

 founding of the club he said that the difference between the great 

 man and the lesser men in science lies in their relative power of 

 perceiving the important thing, which is not necessarily the 

 hardest thing. The great man sees clearly what is most needed 

 at the time and does that. 



Conscientiousness, caution, modesty and unselfishness were 

 the prominent features in his character. He was so careful to 

 give due credit to the work of his predecessors that he often read 

 into a paper much more than its author had thought of. He had 

 a just appreciation of the value of his own discoveries, but shrank 

 from any form of praise or publicity. In 1901 the Copley Medal 

 of the Royal Society of London, which is awarded for the most 

 important scientific work done in any country, was given to 

 Willard Gibbs, but he deprecated the congratulations of his 



