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Josiah Willard Gibbs - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 頁 1 / 8 Josiah Willard Gibbs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 頁 1 / 8 Josiah Willard Gibbs From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Josiah Willard Gibbs (February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American J. Willard Gibbs theoretical physicist, chemist, and mathematician. He devised much of the theoretical foundation for chemical thermodynamics as well as physical chemistry. As a mathematician, he invented vector analysis (independently of Oliver Heaviside). Yale University awarded Gibbs the first American Ph.D. in engineering in 1863, and he spent his entire career at Yale.[1] In 1901, Gibbs was awarded the highest possible honor granted by the international scientific community of his day, granted to only one scientist each year: the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London, for his greatest contribution of being "the first to apply the second law of thermodynamics to the Josiah Willard Gibbs exhaustive discussion of the relation Born between chemical, electrical, and February 11, 1839 thermal energy and capacity for external New Haven, Connecticut work."[2] Died April 28, 1903 (aged 64) New Haven, Connecticut Residence United States Contents Nationality United States Fields Physics and chemistry ■ 1 Biography Institutions Yale University ■ 1.1 Early years ■ 1.2 Middle years Alma mater Yale University ■ 1.3 Later years Doctoral advisor Hubert Anson Newton ■ 2 Scientific recognition Doctoral students Edwin Bidwell Wilson ■ 3 Influential work Irving Fisher ■ 4 Commemoration Henry Andrews Bumstead ■ 5See also ■ 6Notes Known for Father of physical chemistry ■ 7 References Enthalpy ■ 8 External links Gibbs free energy Gibbs entropy Vector analysis Gibbs-Helmholtz equation Biography Gibbs-Duhem equation Gibbs algorithm Early years Gibbs distribution Gibbs state Gibbs phenomenon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs 2011/12/12 Josiah Willard Gibbs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 頁 2 / 8 Gibbs was the seventh in a long line of Gibbs paradox American academics stretching back to Gibbs' phase rule the 17th century. His father, a professor Gibbs-Thomson effect of sacred literature at the Yale Divinity Gibbs isotherm School, is now most remembered for his Gibbs-Donnan effect involvement in the Amistad trial. The Gibbs lemma Although the father was also named Influences Gustav Kirchhoff Josiah Willard, the son is never referred Hermann von Helmholtz to as "Jr." Five other members of Gibbs's extended family were named Josiah Notable awards Rumford Prize (1880) Willard Gibbs. His mother was the Copley Medal (1901) daughter of a Yale graduate in literature. Signature After attending the Hopkins School, Gibbs matriculated at Yale College at Notes the age of 15. He graduated in 1858 near He is the son of theologian Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr. 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 for a thesis entitled On the Form of the Teeth of Wheels in Spur Gearing. He then tutored at Gibbs in his youth. Yale, two years in Latin and one year in what was then called natural Founder of chemical philosophy, now comparable to the natural sciences, particularly thermodynamics. physics. In 1866 he went to Europe, along with his two elder sisters, 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 on the graphical analysis of multi-phase chemical systems. These were eventually published together in a monograph titled On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, his most renowned work. It is 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs 2011/12/12 Josiah Willard Gibbs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 頁 3 / 8 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 (http://www.shsu.edu/~icc_cmf/bio/gibbs.html) ) Some important topics covered in his other papers on heterogeneous equilibria include: ■ The concepts of chemical potential and free energy (available energy); ■ A Gibbsian ensemble ideal, a foundation of statistical mechanics; ■ The Gibbs phase rule. Gibbs also wrote on theoretical thermodynamics. In 1873, he published a paper on the geometric representation of thermodynamic quantities. This paper inspired Maxwell to make (with his own hands) a plaster cast illustrating Gibbs's construct which he then sent to Gibbs. Yale proudly owns it to this day. 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 did not leave New Haven. From 1880 to Willard Gibbs’ 1873 1884, Gibbs combined the ideas of two mathematicians, the quaternions of William Rowan Hamilton and the exterior algebra of available energy (free Hermann Grassmann to obtain vector analysis (independently energy) graph, which shows formulated by the British mathematical physicist and engineer a plane perpendicular to the Oliver Heaviside). Gibbs designed vector analysis to clarify and axis of v (volume) and advance mathematical physics. passing through point A, which represents the initial From 1882 to 1889, Gibbs refined his vector analysis, wrote on state of the body. MN is the optics, and developed a new electrical theory of light. He section of the surface of deliberately avoided theorizing about the structure of matter, a wise dissipated energy. Qε and decision in view of the revolutionary developments in subatomic Qη are sections of the planes particles and quantum mechanics that began around the time of his η = 0 and ε = 0, and death. His chemical thermodynamics was a theory of greater therefore parallel to the axes generality than any other theory of matter extant in his day. of ε (internal energy) and η After 1889, he worked on statistical mechanics, laying a foundation (entropy) respectively. AD and "providing a mathematical framework for quantum theory and and AE are the energy and for Maxwell's theories"[3] He wrote classic textbooks on statistical entropy of the body in its mechanics, which Yale published in 1902. Gibbs also contributed to initial state, AB and AC its crystallography and applied his vector methods to the determination available energy (Gibbs free of planetary and comet orbits. energy) and its capacity for entropy (the amount by Not much is known about the names and careers of Gibbs's students. which the entropy of the body can be increased Gibbs never married, living all his life in his childhood home with a sister and his brother-in-law, the Yale librarian. His focus on science without changing the energy was such that he was generally unavailable personally. His protégé of the body or increasing its E.B. Wilson explains: "Except in the classroom I saw very little of volume) respectively. Gibbs. He had a way, toward the end of the afternoon, of taking a stroll about the streets between his study in the old Sloane Laboratory and his home -- a little exercise between work and dinner -- and one might occasionally come across him at that time."[4] Gibbs died in New Haven and is buried in Grove Street Cemetery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs 2011/12/12 Josiah Willard Gibbs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 頁 4 / 8 Scientific recognition Recognition was slow in coming, in part because Gibbs published mainly in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, a journal edited by his librarian brother-in-law, little read in the USA and even less so in Europe. At first, only a few European theoretical physicists and chemists, such as the Scot James Clerk Maxwell, paid any attention to his work. Only when Gibbs's papers were translated into German (then the leading language for chemistry) by Wilhelm Ostwald in 1892, and into French by Henri Louis le Chatelier in 1899, did his ideas receive wide currency in Europe. His theory of the phase rule was experimentally validated by the works of H. W. Bakhuis Roozeboom, who showed how to apply it in a variety of situations, thereby assuring it of widespread use. Gibbs was even less appreciated in his native America. Nevertheless, he was recognised as follows: ■ In 1880, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded Gibbs its Rumford Prize for his work in heat.[5] ■ In 1910, the American Chemical Society established the Willard Gibbs Medal in his memory, through William A. Converse (1862–1940), a former chairman/secretary of the Chicago Section.[6] During his lifetime, American colleges and secondary schools emphasized classics rather than science, and students took little interest in his Yale lectures.
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