ATDTDA (1): Professor Gibbs (p. 29: 31)

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Well now, there's a student of Professor Gibbs whose work really bears looking into [...]" (p. 29, line 31).


Josiah Willard Gibbs (February 11, 1839 New Haven - April 28, 1903 New Haven) was one of the very first American theoretical physicists and chemists. The greatest American scientist of the nineteenth century, without a close second, he devised much of the theoretical foundation for chemical thermodynamics. 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. The J. Willard Gibbs Professorship in Theoretical Chemistry at Yale was created in his honor. [...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Gibbs

http://jwgibbs.cchem.berkeley.edu/jwgibbs_bio.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/willard-gibbs



[...] Gibbs' important 1873 papers were Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids and A Method of Geometrical Representation of the Thermodynamic Properties of Substances by Means of Surfaces. In 1876 Gibbs published the first part of the work for which he is most famous On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, publishing the second part of this work in 1878.  

The first of these papers describes diagrams in thermodynamics. Bumstead (see [11] or [3]) writes:-  

Of the new diagrams which he first described in this paper, the simplest, in some respects, is that in which entropy and temperature are taken as coordinates... the work or heat of any cycle is proportional to its area in any part of the diagram ... it has found most important applications in the study of the steam engine.  

The second paper extended the diagrams into three dimensions and this work impressed Maxwell so much that he constructed a three dimensional model of Gibbs's thermodynamic surface and, shortly before his death, sent the model to Gibbs.  

However the third paper is the most remarkable. Bumstead in [11] or [3] writes:-  

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 any one, and especially so for students of experimental chemistry whom it most concerns...  

Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. He first produced printed notes for the use of his own students in 1881 and 1884 and it was not until 1901 that a properly published version appeared prepared for publication by one of his students. Using ideas of Grassmann, Gibbs produced a system much more easily applied to physics than that of Hamilton.  

He applied his vector methods to give a method of finding the orbit of a comet from three observations. The method was applied to find the orbit of Swift's comet of 1880 and involved less computation than Gauss's method.  

A series of five papers by Gibbs on the electromagnetic theory of light were published between 1882 and 1889. His work on statistical mechanics was also important, providing a mathematical framework for quantum theory and for Maxwell's theories. In fact his last publication was Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics and this work is a beautiful account putting the foundations of statistical mechanics on a firm foundation. [...]

http://www.shsu.edu/~icc_cmf/bio/gibbs.html
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