Willard Gibbs

:For Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr. see Willard Gibbs (linguist)

Scientific recognition

Among the honors given to Gibbs' memory after his death, Yale University created the "J. Willard Gibbs Professorship in Theoretical Chemistry". Held during most of his career at Yale by eventual Nobel Prize laureate Lars Onsager, it was an extremely appropriate title for Onsager, who was primarily involved, like Gibbs, in the application of new mathematical ideas to problems in physical chemistry, especially statistical mechanics.

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Since, in the mid-1800s, American colleges had little interest in the sciences and emphasized classics, Gibbs found little student interest in his lectures. The interest in his work came mainly from other scientists, particularly the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who was one of the first European scientists to recognize Gibbs as a theoretical physicist of international stature http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/Gibbs%2c+Josiah+Willard. Even that recognition was slow in coming, because he published in an obscure journal which was not widely read in Europe, and it was only when Wilhelm Ostwald translated his papers into book form in German (in 1892) and Henri Louis le Chatelier made a French translation (in 1899), that his ideas received wide currency in Europe.

Related Topics:
Science - Scottish - Physicist - James Clerk Maxwell - Theoretical physicist - Europe - Wilhelm Ostwald - German - 1892 - Henri Louis le Chatelier - French - 1899

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