Josiah Willard Gibbs. 199 



great deficiencies in tlie scientific record of the nineteenth 

 century has been supplied in tlie first year of the twentieth. 



In method and results, this part of the work is more general 

 than any preceding treatment of the subject ; it is in no sense 

 a treatise on the kinetic theory of gases, and the results 

 obtained are not the properties of any one form of matter, 

 but the general equations of thermodynamics which belong to 

 all forms alike. This corresponds to the generality of the 

 hypotheses in which nothing is assumed as to the mechanical 

 nature of the systems considered, except that they are mechani- 

 cal and obey Lagrange's or Hamilton's equations. In this 

 respect it may be considered to have done for thermodynamics 

 what Maxwell's treatise did for electromagnetism, and we may 

 say (as Poincare has said of Maxwell) that Gibbs has not 

 sought to give a mechanical explanation of heat, but has 

 limited his task to demonstrating that such an explanation is 

 possible. And this achievement forms a fitting culmination of 

 his life's work. 



The value to science of Professor Gibbs's work has been 

 formally recognized by many learned societies and universities, 

 both in this country and abroad. The list of societies and 

 academies of which he was a member or correspondent 

 includes the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 

 National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences, the Dutch Society of Sciences, Haarlem, 

 the Royal Society of Sciences, Gottingen, the Royal Institution 

 of Great Britain, the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the Lon- 

 don Mathematical Society, the Manchester Literary and Philo- 

 sophical Society, the Royal Academy of Amsterdam, the Royal 

 Society of London, the Royal Prussian Academy of Berlin, the 

 French Institute, the Physical Society of London, the Bavarian 

 Academy of Sciences and the American Mathematical Society. 

 He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Williams Col- 

 lege, and from the universities of Erlangen, Princeton, and 

 Christiania. In 1881 he received the Rumford Medal from 

 the American Academy of Boston, and in 1901 the Copley 

 Medal from the Royal Society of London. 



Outside of his scientific activities. Professor Gibbs's life was 

 uneventful ; he made but one visit to Europe and with the 

 exception of those three years, and of summer vacations in the 

 mountains, his whole life was spent in New Haven, and all 

 but his earlier years in the same house, which his father had 

 built only a few rods from the school where he prepared for 

 college and from the university in the service of which his 

 life was spent. He never married, but made his home with 

 his sister and her family. Of a retiring disposition, he went 



