Editing Josiah Willard Gibbs (section)

== Scientific recognition ==

Gibbs worked at a time when there was little tradition of rigorous theoretical science in the United States. His research was not easily understandable to his students or his colleagues, and he made no effort to popularize his ideas or to simplify their exposition to make them more accessible.<ref name="MacTutor" /> His seminal work on thermodynamics was published mostly in the ''Transactions of the Connecticut Academy'', a journal edited by his librarian brother-in-law, which was little read in the US and even less so in Europe. When Gibbs submitted his long paper on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances to the academy, both [[Elias Loomis]] and H. A. Newton protested that they did not understand Gibbs's work at all, but they helped to raise the money needed to pay for the typesetting of the many mathematical symbols in the paper. Several Yale faculty members, as well as business and professional men in New Haven, contributed funds for that purpose.<ref name="Rukeyser-printing">Rukeyser 1998, pp.&nbsp;225–226</ref>

Even though it had been immediately embraced by Maxwell, Gibbs's graphical formulation of the laws of thermodynamics came into widespread use only in the mid 20th century, with the work of [[László Tisza]] and [[Herbert Callen]].<ref>Wightman 1979, pp. xiii, lxxx</ref> According to James Gerald Crowther,

{{blockquote|in his later years [Gibbs] 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.| J. G. Crowther, 1937<ref name="MacTutor" />}}

[[File:Burlington House ILN 1873.jpg|thumb|alt=Image of Burlington House, London, in 1873|[[Burlington House]], site of the Royal Society of London, in 1873]]

On the other hand, Gibbs did receive the major honors then possible for an academic scientist in the US. He was elected to the [[National Academy of Sciences]] in 1879 and received the 1880 [[Rumford Prize]] from the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] for his work on chemical thermodynamics.<ref>{{cite book | last = Müller | first = Ingo | title = A History of Thermodynamics – the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy | publisher = Springer | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-3-540-46226-2}}</ref> In 1895, he was elected to the [[American Philosophical Society]] in 1895.<ref>{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Josiah+Willard+Gibbs&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2024-03-19 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref> He was also awarded honorary doctorates by Princeton University and [[Williams College]].<ref name="Bumstead" />

In Europe, Gibbs was inducted as honorary member of the [[London Mathematical Society]] in 1892 and elected [[List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 1897|Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1897]].<ref name=formemrs>{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150316060617/https://royalsociety.org/about-us/fellowship/fellows/|archive-date=March 16, 2015|url=https://royalsociety.org/about-us/fellowship/fellows/|publisher=Royal Society|location=London|title=Fellows of the Royal Society}}</ref> He was elected as corresponding member of the [[Prussian Academy of Sciences|Prussian]] and [[French Academy of Sciences|French]] Academies of Science and received honorary doctorates from the universities of [[University of Dublin|Dublin]],<ref>{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=University intelligence |date=June 2, 1902 |page=9 |issue=36783}}</ref> [[University of Erlangen-Nuremberg|Erlangen]], and [[University of Oslo|Christiania]]<ref name="Bumstead" /> (now Oslo). The Royal Society further honored Gibbs in 1901 with the [[Copley Medal]], then regarded as the highest international award in the natural sciences,<ref name="APS" /> noting that he had been "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."<ref name="Britannica-1911" /> Gibbs, who remained in New Haven, was represented at the award ceremony by Commander [[Richardson Clover]], the US naval attaché in London.<ref>Rukeyser 1998, p. 345</ref>

In his autobiography, mathematician [[Gian-Carlo Rota]] tells of casually browsing the mathematical stacks of [[Sterling Library]] and stumbling on a handwritten mailing list, attached to some of Gibbs's course notes, which listed over two hundred notable scientists of his day, including Poincaré, Boltzmann, [[David Hilbert]], and [[Ernst Mach]]. From this, Rota concluded that Gibbs's work was better known among the scientific elite of his day than the published material suggests.<ref name="Rota">{{cite book | last = Rota | first = Gian-Carlo | author-link=Gian-Carlo Rota | title = Indiscrete Thoughts | url = https://archive.org/details/indiscretethough0000rota | url-access = registration | publisher = Birkhäuser | year = 1996 | page = [https://archive.org/details/indiscretethough0000rota/page/25 25] |isbn = 978-0-8176-3866-5}}</ref> Lynde Wheeler reproduces that mailing list in an appendix to his biography of Gibbs.<ref name="Wheeler-mailing">Wheeler 1998, appendix IV</ref> That Gibbs succeeded in interesting his European correspondents in his work is demonstrated by the fact that his monograph "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances" was translated into German (then the leading language for chemistry) by [[Wilhelm Ostwald]] in 1892 and into French by [[Henri Louis Le Châtelier]] in 1899.<ref>Wheeler 1998, pp.&nbsp;102–104</ref>