Everything about Josiah Willard Gibbs totally explained
» For Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr., see Willard Gibbs (linguist).
Josiah Willard Gibbs (
February 11,
1839 –
April 28,
1903) was an
American engineer, theoretical
physicist, and
chemist noted for his famed 1876 publication of
On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, a graphical analysis of multi-phase chemical systems, which laid the basis for a large part of modern-day science.
As one of the greatest American scientists, he devised much of the theoretical foundation for
chemical thermodynamics as well as
physical chemistry. As a
mathematician, he was an inventor of
vector analysis. He spent his entire career at Yale, which awarded him the first American
Ph.D. in
engineering in 1863. In 1880, for his work in
heat, Gibbs was awarded the
Rumford Prize by the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1901, Gibbs was awarded the
Copley medal of the
Royal Society of London for 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.” This summarizes Gibbs's most fruitful contribution to science. On February 28, 2003, Yale held a 100th anniversary symposium in his honor. According to the
American Mathematical Society, which established the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship in 1923 to increase public awareness of the aspects of
mathematics and its applications, Gibbs is one of the greatest scientists America has ever produced. Nobelist
Paul Samuelson describes Gibbs as "
Yale's great physicist". In 1950, Gibbs was elected to the
Hall of Fame for Great Americans.
Biography
Early years
Gibbs was the seventh in a long line of American academics stretching back to the 17th century.
His father, a professor of sacred literature at the
Yale Divinity School, is now most remembered for his involvement in the
Amistad trial. Although the father was also named Josiah Willard, the son is never referred to as "Jr." Five other members of Gibbs's extended family were named Josiah Willard Gibbs. His mother was the daughter of a Yale graduate in literature.
After attending the
Hopkins School, Gibbs matriculated at
Yale College at the age of 15. He graduated in 1858 near the top of his class, and was awarded prizes in
mathematics and
Latin.
Middle years
In 1863, Gibbs was awarded the first
Ph.D. degree in
engineering in the USA from the
Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. He then tutored at Yale, two years in Latin and one year in what was then called
natural philosophy, now comparable to the natural sciences, particularly physics. In
1866 he went to
Europe to study, spending a year each at
Paris,
Berlin, and
Heidelberg, where he was influenced by
Kirchhoff and
Helmholtz. At the time, German academics were the leading authorities in
chemistry,
thermodynamics, and theoretical natural science in general. These three years account for nearly all of his life spent outside New Haven.
In
1869, he returned to
Yale and was appointed Professor of
Mathematical Physics in 1871, the first such professorship in the United States and a position he held for the rest of his life. The appointment was unpaid at first, a situation common in Germany and otherwise not unusual at the time, because Gibbs had yet to publish anything. Between
1876 and
1878 Gibbs wrote a series of papers collectively titled
On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, now deemed one of the greatest scientific achievements of the
19th century and one of the foundations of
physical chemistry. In these papers Gibbs applied
thermodynamics to interpret physicochemical phenomena, successfully explaining and interrelating what had previously been a mass of isolated facts.
"It is universally recognised that its publication was an event of the first importance in the history of chemistry. ... Nevertheless it was a number of years before its value was generally known, this delay was due largely to the fact that its mathematical form and rigorous deductive processes make it difficult reading for anyone, and especially so for students of experimental chemistry whom it most concerns... " (J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, J. Willard Gibbs
)
Some important topics covered in his other papers on heterogeneous equilibria include:
Later years
In 1880, the new
Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, Maryland offered Gibbs a position paying $3000. Yale responded by raising his salary to $2000, and he didn't leave New Haven. From 1880 to
1884, Gibbs combined the ideas of two mathematicians, the
quaternions of
William Rowan Hamilton and the
exterior algebra of
Hermann Grassmann to obtain
vector analysis (independently formulated by the British mathematical
physicist and
engineer Oliver Heaviside). Gibbs designed vector analysis to clarify and advance
mathematical physics.
From 1882 to 1889, Gibbs refined his vector analysis, wrote on
optics, and developed a new electrical theory of light. He deliberately avoided theorizing about the structure of matter (a wise decision, given the revolutionary developments in
subatomic particles and
quantum mechanics that began around the time of his death), developing a theory of greater generality than any other theory of matter extant in his day.
After 1889, he worked on
statistical mechanics, laying a foundation and "providing a mathematical framework for
quantum theory and for
Maxwell's theories" He wrote classic textbooks on
statistical mechanics, which Yale published in
1902. Gibbs also contributed to
crystallography and applied his vector methods to the determination of
planetary and
comet orbits.
Information about the names and careers of Gibbs's students isn't readily available, yet one of his protegés was
Edwin Bidwell Wilson, who in turn passed his Gibbsian knowledge onto
Paul Samuelson.
During his lifetime, American secondary schools and colleges emphasized classics rather than science, and students took little interest in his Yale lectures. (That scientific teaching and research are a fundamental part of the modern university emerged in Germany during the 19th century and only gradually spread from there to the USA.) Gibbs's position at Yale and in American science generally has been described as follows:
"In his later years he was a tall, dignified gentleman, with a healthy stride and ruddy complexion, performing his share of household chores, approachable and kind (if unintelligible) to students. Gibbs was highly esteemed by his friends, but American science was too preoccupied with practical questions to make much use of his profound theoretical work during his lifetime. He lived out his quiet life at Yale, deeply admired by a few able students but making no immediate impress on American science commensurate with his genius." (Crowther 1969: nnn)
Not to say that Gibbs was unknown in his day. The mathematician
Gian-Carlo Rota, while casually browsing the mathematical stacks of
Sterling Library, stumbled upon a handwritten mailing list attached to Gibbs' course notes. It listed over two hundred of the most notable scientists of Gibb’s time, including
Poincaré,
Hilbert,
Boltzmann, and
Mach. One must infer that Gibbs' work was somewhat better known among the scientific elite of his day than public material suggests.
In 1945, Yale University created the
J. Willard Gibbs Professorship in Theoretical Chemistry, held until 1973 by
Lars Onsager, who won the 1968 Nobel Prize in chemistry. This appointment was a very fitting one, as Onsager, like Gibbs, was primarily involved in the application of new mathematical ideas to problems in physical chemistry, especially statistical mechanics. There is also a
J. Willard Gibbs Professorship of Thermomechanics presently held by
Bernard D. Coleman at
Rutgers University.
J. W. Gibbs Laboratory at Yale and The J. Willard Gibbs Assistant Professorship in Mathematics at Yale were also named in his honor.
On
May 4,
2005 the
United States Postal Service issued the
American Scientists commemorative
postage stamp series, depicting Gibbs,
John von Neumann,
Barbara McClintock and
Richard Feynman.
Nobelists derived from the works of Gibbs
In 1901, Gibbs was awarded the
Copley Medal of the
Royal Society of the
United Kingdom, illustrating worldwide recognition of his work among contemporary theoreticians. This medal, awarded to only one scientist each year, was the highest possible honor granted by the international scientific community of his day.
Gibbs' contributions, however, were not fully recognized until well after the 1923 publication of
Gilbert N. Lewis and
Merle Randall’s 1923
Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances, which introduced the methods of Gibbs to chemists world-wide, and upon which the science of
chemical engineering is largely founded. The following individuals won a Nobel Prize through the works of Gibbs:
Dutch scientist Johann van der Waals won the 1910 Nobel prize in physics, which, as he states in his Nobel Lecture, is due in part to the works of Gibbs and his equations of state.
The work of German physicist Max Planck, winner of 1918 Nobel prize in physics, in quantum mechanics, particularly his 1900 quantum theory paper, is largely based on thermodynamics of Rudolf Clausius, Gibbs, and Ludwig Boltzmann. Planck stated this about Gibbs: "…whose name not only in America but in the whole world will ever be reckoned among the most renowned theoretical physicists of all times…".
At the turn of the 20th century, Gilbert N. Lewis worked in coordination with Merle Randall on the use of Gibbs chemical thermodynamic theories and published their results in the 1923 textbook Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances, one of the two founding books in chemical thermodynamics. In the 1910s, William Giauque entered the College of Chemistry at Berkeley, where he received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry, with honors, in 1920. Although he entered university with an interest in becoming a chemical engineer, he soon developed an interest in research under the influence of Professor Gilbert Lewis. Due to his outstanding performance as a student, he became an Instructor of Chemistry at Berkeley in 1922 and after passing through the various grades of professorship, he became full Professor of Chemistry in 1934. In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero in relation to the third law of thermodynamics.
In 1947, American economist Paul Samuelson published Foundations of Economic Analysis, based on his Harvard University doctoral dissertation. Samuelson says that his work was influenced by the classical thermodynamic methods of Gibbs. Samuelson was sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970, the second year of the Prize.
Tributes
» Howard Scott leader of the Technical Alliance and later Technocracy Incorporated cited Gibbs as the intellectual scientific forefather of the concepts of Technocracy.
Quotations
"Mathematics is a language." (reportedly spoken by Gibbs at a Yale faculty meeting)
"A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane."
"It has been said that 'the human mind has never invented a labor-saving machine equal to algebra.' If this be true, it's but natural and proper that an age like our own, characterized by the multiplication of labor-saving machinery, should be distinguished by the unexampled development of this most refined and most beautiful of machines." (1887, quoted in Meinke and Tucker 1992: 190)Further Information
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