OLIVER WOLCOTT GIBBS 109 



Gibbs, a man of modest wants, was probably always pos- 

 sessed of such means that he could restrict himself to the aca- 

 demic side of his profession, and his family traditions and 

 early training would hardly have fitted him for business. I 

 remember conversations with him about the successful ca- 

 reers of his friends, A. W. Hofmann and Joseph Wharton, 

 which made it clear that he would not have attacked a tech- 

 nical problem with any degree of confidence. Perhaps, there- 

 fore, a knowledge of his own limitations may have assisted 

 his natural predilections in determining the direction of his 

 work toward pure, one may almost say abstruse, science. 

 But his contemporaries saw a man seeking truth for truth's 

 sake, and they put their trust in his disinterestedness, as 

 well as in his scientific acumen and experimental skill. Justly 

 conscious of his own worth, he was quick to recognize what 

 was meritorious in the work of others, and to applaud, without 

 reserve, the advances along lines quite foreign to his own point 

 of view, while maintaining an almost pathetic veneration 

 for his own great masters, between whom and the present 

 generation he remained one of the last links. Cant, religious, 

 moral or scientific, was abhorrent to him, and he could be 

 cruelly caustic in his denunciation of what he deemed charla- 

 tanry or insincerity. On the other hand, where he once placed 

 his trust, he left it implicitly, and, when his advice and help 

 were sought, in good faith, he gave of his best. In appearance, 

 and in some respect manners, he resembled James Russell 

 Lowell, to whom I believe he was distantly related. It would 

 have taken considerable boldness to be flippant in his presence, 

 and his students, at all periods of his life, seem to have stood 

 in great awe of him. But he was dearly beloved by friends 

 in and out of academic circles, and he seemed to have the 

 power of impressing his own enthusiasm upon those with 

 whom he collaborated for the public good, as well as for the 



