102 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 733 



under the inspiring guidance of Eose, Eam- 

 melsberg, Liebig, Laurent, Dumas and Eeg- 

 nault had given him an insight into the 

 possible future of chemistry which forbade 

 his contentedly settling down into the mere 

 routine of teaching. Thus at once he joined 

 the then pitifully small band of Americans 

 who sought to advance the bounds of knowl- 

 edge. 



It is impossible here to present a detailed 

 survey of the greatly varied fields in which 

 his work lay, but a brief sketch will give some 

 idea of the activity of his scientific imagina- 

 tion. His first important research concerned 

 the complex ammonia-cobalt compounds, one 

 of the most interesting series among inor- 

 ganic substances. This masterly work, con- 

 ducted with the collaboration of F. A. Genth, 

 shed much light upon the puzzling nature of 

 complex compounds in general, and laid the 

 foundation for one of the most elaborate of 

 modem chemical theories. The following 

 years (1861-4) saw him engaged upon a 

 careful study of the platinum metals, upon 

 which he was engaged when he accepted the 

 call to Cambridge in 1863. Shortly after- 

 ward (1864) he published for the first time 

 a description of his use of the voltaic current 

 for depositing copper and nickel in such a 

 manner that the deposited metals could be 

 directly weighed^ — thus providing a simple 

 and exact quantitative method for the analysis 

 of substances containing these metals. The 

 fact that a German, Luckow, afterwards 

 stated that he had used the method for copper 

 before Gibbs had used it, does not detract from 

 the real originality of Gibbs's idea; for 

 Luekow's work was wholly unknown to Gibbs. 



From time to time throughout all Gibbs's 

 long period of scientific activity there ap- 

 peared papers from his pen describing other 

 new and useful methods of quantitative 

 analysis, many of which have been incor- 

 porated into the common analytical practise 

 of to-day. For example, his sand-filtering 

 device of 1867 may be said to have been a 

 forerunner of the present admirable apparatus 

 perfected by Gooch and Munroe. 



Not long after coming to Harvard, Gibbs 



turned his attention to the precise use of the 

 spectrometer in chemical investigation, and 

 this work was continued in 1875. Through- 

 out all this time the subject of his work with 

 Genth was only half dormant in his mind, 

 and occasional theoretical or experimental 

 papers concerning the peculiar nature of co- 

 baltamine compounds showed his devotion to 

 his early choice. 



Not content with the paradoxes and puzzles 

 ofiered by these complex bases, or with the 

 other abstruse subjects mentioned, he attacked 

 in succeeding years the complex inorganic 

 acids, composed of various combinations of 

 tungstic, molybdic, phosphoric, arsenic, anti- 

 monic and vanadic acids. One can not help 

 wishing, upon studying his patient and care- 

 ful quest among the bewildering phenomena 

 manifested by these singular substances, that 

 he had had the assistance of modern physical 

 chemistry. But our present knowledge was 

 not then at any one's disposal, and Gibbs did 

 his best with the means at his command, de- 

 voting himself for a number of years to the 

 expansion and systematizing of the work in 

 this but slightly cultivated field. 



From inorganic chemistry he later turned 

 for a short time to a very different subject, 

 undertaking with H. A. Hare and E. T. 

 Reichert, a systematic study of the action of 

 definitely related chemical compounds upon 

 animals. This research, which appeared in 

 1891 and 1892, together with occasional previ- 

 ous papers upon organic chemistry, afforded 

 evidence of the breadth of his interest. 



Keen as his sense of the importance of 

 physiological chemistry became, it was not 

 keen enough to divert him wholly from his 

 devotion to the rarer substances of the inor- 

 ganic worlds as his following paper on the 

 oxides contained in eerite, samarskite, gado- 

 linite and fergusonite testified. 



Although Woleott Gibbs was essentially an 

 experimentalist, he was one of the first of 

 American chemists to appreciate the impor- 

 tance of thermodynamics. His large library 

 contained all the standard works upon heat, 

 and his influence was the prime factor in 

 having caused the award of the Rum ford 



