Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/477

Rh admit of much ulterior development." The work of Gibbs has added to it the immense field of chemical equilibrium and wherever "phases," "heterogeneous systems," "chemical and thermodynamic potentials," or "critical states" are mentioned he has left his impress upon modern scientific thought. It is not without reason then, that Ostwald has called this mathematician "the founder of chemical energetics," asserting that "he has given new form and substance to chemistry for another century at least."

Josiah Willard Gibbs was born in New Haven, Conn., on February 11, 1839. His father, who was descended from Sir Henry Gibbs, of Honington, Warwickshire, was professor of sacred literature in Yale College during the years 1821-61, and was esteemed for unusual scholarship in his day. The son, like many other mathematicians, showed early aptitude for linguistic as well as for mathematical studies, and, entering Yale in 1854, was graduated in 1858, after winning many prizes and distinctions in Latin and mathematics. He began to teach mathematics and physics at Yale in 1863, having received his doctor's degree in that year. During 1866-69 he traveled in Europe, studying his chosen subjects at Paris, Berlin and Heidelberg, and hearing the lectures of Magnus, Kirchhoff and Helmholtz. In July, 1871, two years after his return, he was appointed professor of mathematical physics in Yale College, about the same time that Clerk Maxwell assumed similar duties in the Cavendish Laboratory, at Cambridge. This position Professor Gibbs held until his death, April 28, 1903. Professor Gibbs devoted his whole life to his work, the interests of his university and his pupils, and apart from the earlier years of travel and some excursions into the field of controversy, his was the quiet and uneventful career of the typical man of science. During his period of productive activity, 1873-1902, he made important contributions to the electromagnetic theory of light, multiple algebra and vector analysis, astronomy, theoretical and statistical dynamics, but his enduring fame rests chiefly upon his work in thermodynamics, the science which, in the words of his English biographer, he reduced "to its canonical form." He was a member of most of the important scientific societies of the world, was Rumford medalist of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1881 and in 1901, the Royal Society, of London, conferred its highest distinction, the Copley medal, upon Professor Gibbs, as being "the first to apply the second law of thermodynamics to the exhaustive discussion of the relation between chemical, electrical and thermal energy and capacity for external work."

"The history of thermodynamics," says Maxwell, "has an especial