Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs - Volume 2.djvu/285

Rh In 1855, he was appointed professor of mathematics at the early age of twenty-five. This appointment testifies to the confidence which was felt in his abilities, and is almost the only instance in which the Yale Corporation has conferred the dignity of a full professorship on so young a man.

This appointment being accompanied with a leave of absence for a year, in order to give him the opportunity to study in Europe, it was but natural that he should be attracted to Paris, where Chasles was expounding at the Sorbonne that modern higher geometry of which he was to so large an extent the creator, and which appeals so strongly to the sense of the beautiful. And it was inevitable that the student should be profoundly impressed by the genius of his teacher and by the fruitfulness and elegance of the methods which he was introducing. The effect of this year's study under the inspiring influence of such a master is seen in several contributions to the Mathematical Monthly during its brief existence in the years 1858–61. One of these was a problem which attracted at once the attention of Cayley, who sent a solution. Another was a discussion of the problem "to draw a circle tangent to three given circles," remarkable for his use of the principle of inversion. A third was a very elaborate memoir on the construction of curves by the straight edge and compasses, and by the straight edge alone. These early essays in geometry show a mind thoroughly imbued with the spirit of modern geometry, skilful in the use of its methods, and eager to extend the bounds of our knowledge.

Nevertheless, although for many years the higher geometry was with him a favorite subject of instruction for his more advanced students, either his own preferences, or perhaps rather the influence of his environment, was destined to lead him into a very different field of research. In the attention which has been paid to astronomy in this country we may recognize the history of the world repeating itself in a new country in respect to the order of the development of the sciences, or it may be enough to say that the questions which nature forces on us are likely to get more attention in a new country and a bustling age, than those which a reflective mind puts to itself, and that the love of abstract truth which prompts to the construction of a system of doctrine, and the refined taste which is a critic of methods of demonstration, are matters of slow growth. At all events, when Professor Newton was entering upon his professorship, the study of the higher geometry was less consonant with the spirit of the age in this country than the pursuit of astronomical knowledge, and the latter sphere of activity soon engrossed his best efforts.

Yet it was not in any of the beaten paths of astronomers that Professor Newton was to move. It was rather in the wilds of a