OLIVER WOLCOTT GIBBS 111 



Gibbs could not have appeared as a recluse. In the "Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science," he was for twenty-two years the 

 eloquent interpreter of the trend of chemistry to workers 

 in other fields of science, and, similarly, the early volumes of 

 the "Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft" con- 

 tain his concise but adequate reports of the achievements 

 of American chemistry. His understanding and sympathy 

 for other branches of exact sciences was great, and, in fact, 

 thermodynamics and optics received much of his attention: 

 he it was who first appreciated the work of his namesake, 

 J. Willard Gibbs, and insisted on the award of the Rumford 

 Medal for that treatise on "Equilibrium in Heterogeneous 

 Systems," which became famous twenty years later, when 

 Le Chatelier rediscovered it for the benefit of modern chem- 

 ists. I could instance, from personal observation, other 

 judgments rendered by him on scientific matters of less mo- 

 ment, in which the clearness of his vision and the thoroughness 

 of his examination proved that no accidental circumstances 

 led him thus to anticipate the trend of physical thought. 

 His contemporaries were stimulated both by the ideas which 

 he freely placed at their disposal, and by the appreciative 

 discrimination which he exercised toward their own scientific 

 efforts. 



Born in New York City, on February 21, 1821, as the second 

 son of Colonel George and of Laura Gibbs, he was named 

 after his maternal grandfather, Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of 

 the Treasury under Washington and Adams. His boyhood 

 was chiefly spent on his father's farm at Newtown (near 

 what is now Astoria), Long Island, and he was educated at 

 the Columbia Grammar School and Columbia College, from 

 which he received the degrees of A.B. in 1841 and A.M. in 

 1844. He also graduated in medicine from the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons in 1845, though he never practiced 



