200 Josiah Willard Gills. 



little into general society and was known to few outside the 

 unis-ersity ; but by those who were honored by his friendship, 

 and by his students, he was greatly beloved. His modesty 

 with regard to his work was proverbial among all who knew 

 him, and it was entirely real and unaffected. There w^as never 

 any doubt in his mind, however, as to the accuracy of anything 

 which he published, nor indeed did he underestimate its 

 importance ; but he seemed to regard it in an entirely imper- 

 sonal way and never doubted, apparently, that what he had 

 accomplished could have been done equally well by almost any 

 one who might have happened to give his attention to the 

 same problems. Those nearest him for many years are con- 

 strained to believe that he never realized that he was endowed 

 with most unusual powers of mind ; there was never any 

 tendency to make the importance of his work an excuse for 

 neglecting even the most trivial of his duties as an officer of 

 the college, and he was never too busy to devote, at once, as 

 much time and energy as might be necessary to any of his 

 students who privately sought his assistance. 



Although long intervals sometimes elapsed between his 

 publications, his habits of work were steady and systematic ; 

 but he worked alone and, apparently, without need of the 

 stimulus of personal conversation upon the subject, or of criti- 

 cism from others, which is often helpful even when the critic 

 is intellectually an inferior. So far from publishing partial 

 results, he seldom, if ever, spoke of what he was doing until it 

 was practically in its final and complete form. This was his 

 chief limitation as a teacher of advanced students ; he did not 

 take them into his confidence with regard to his current work, 

 and even when he lectured upon a subject in advance of its 

 publication (as was the case for a number of years before the 

 appearance of the Statistical Mechanics) the work was really 

 complete except for a few finishing touches. Thus his students 

 were deprived of the advantage of seeing his great structures 

 in process of building, of helping him in the details, and of 

 being in such ways encouraged to make for themselves attempts 

 similar in character, however small their scale. But on the 

 other hand, they owe to him a debt of gratitude for an intro- 

 duction into the profounder regions of natural philosophy sucli 

 as they could have obtained from few other living teachers. 

 Always carefully prepared, his lectures were marked by the 

 same great qualities as his published papers and were, in addi- 

 tion, enriched by many apt and simple illustrations which can 

 never be forgotten by those who heard them. No necessary 

 qualification to a statement was ever omitted and, on the other 

 hand, it seldom failed to receive the most general application 

 of which it was capable ; his students had ample opportunity 



