Editing Josiah Willard Gibbs (section)

== Commemoration ==
[[File:JWGibbs-bronze.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Photograph of bronze memorial tablet of Willard Gibbs|Bronze memorial tablet, originally installed in 1912 at the Sloane Physics Laboratory, now at the entrance to the Josiah Willard Gibbs Laboratories, Yale University]]

When the German physical chemist [[Walther Nernst]] visited Yale in 1906 to give the [[Silliman Memorial Lectures|Silliman lecture]], he was surprised to find no tangible memorial for Gibbs. Nernst donated his $500 lecture fee to the university to help pay for a suitable monument. This was finally unveiled in 1912, in the form of a bronze bas-relief by sculptor [[Lee Lawrie]], installed in the Sloane Physics Laboratory.<ref name="Seeger-memorial">Seeger 1974, p. 21</ref> In 1910, the [[American Chemical Society]] established the [[Willard Gibbs Award]] for eminent work in pure or applied chemistry.<ref>{{cite web|title=Willard Gibbs Award|url=http://chicagoacs.org/content.php?page=Willard_Gibbs_Award|website=Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society|access-date=February 8, 2016}}</ref> In 1923, the [[American Mathematical Society]] endowed the [[Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship]], "to show the public some idea of the aspects of mathematics and its applications".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ams.org/meetings/gibbs-lect.html |title=Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectures |work=Special Lectures |publisher=American Mathematical Society |access-date=June 16, 2012}}</ref>

[[File:JWGibbsLabs.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Photograph of the J. W. Gibbs Laboratories, Yale University|Building housing the Josiah Willard Gibbs Laboratories, at Yale University's [[Science Hill (Yale University)|Science Hill]]]]

In 1945, Yale University created the J. Willard Gibbs Professorship in Theoretical Chemistry, held until 1973 by [[Lars Onsager]]. Onsager, who much like Gibbs, focused on applying new mathematical ideas to problems in physical chemistry, won the 1968 Nobel Prize in chemistry.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1063/1.3037438 |title=Lars Onsager |journal=Physics Today |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=77 |year=1977 |last1=Montroll |first1=Elliott W. |bibcode=1977PhT....30b..77M }}</ref> In addition to establishing the Josiah Willard Gibbs Laboratories and the J. Willard Gibbs Assistant Professorship in Mathematics, Yale has also hosted two symposia dedicated to Gibbs's life and work, one in 1989 and another on the centenary of his death, in 2003.<ref>{{cite journal |year=2003 |title=Forum News |journal=History of Physics Newsletter |volume=8 |issue=6 |page=3| url=http://www.aps.org/units/fhp/newsletters/upload/february03.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.aps.org/units/fhp/newsletters/upload/february03.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Rutgers University]] endowed a J. Willard Gibbs Professorship of Thermomechanics, held as of 2014 by Bernard Coleman.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mechanics.rutgers.edu/BDC.html |title=Faculty webpage |last=Coleman |first=Bernard D |publisher=Rutgers University, Dept. of Mechanics and Materials Science |access-date=January 24, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150415022401/http://www.mechanics.rutgers.edu/BDC.html |archive-date=April 15, 2015 }}</ref>

Gibbs was elected in 1950 to the [[Hall of Fame for Great Americans]].<ref name="HallofFame">{{cite web |url=http://www.medalcollectors.org/Guides/HFGA/HFGA.html |title=The Hall of Fame for Great Americans at New York University |last=Johnson |first=D. Wayne |publisher=Medal Collectors of America |access-date=June 16, 2012 |archive-date=November 15, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141115095902/http://www.medalcollectors.org/Guides/HFGA/HFGA.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> The [[oceanographic research ship]] [[USNS Josiah Willard Gibbs (T-AGOR-1)|USNS ''Josiah Willard Gibbs'' (T-AGOR-1)]] was in service with the [[United States Navy]] from 1958 to 1971.<ref name="ship">{{cite web|url=http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/s4/san_carlos.htm |archive-url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20110712144712/http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/s4/san_carlos.htm |archive-date=July 12, 2011 |title=San Carlos |work=Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships |publisher=Naval History and Heritage Command |access-date=June 16, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[Gibbs (crater)|Gibbs crater]], near the eastern [[Lunar limb|limb]] of the [[Moon]], was named in the scientist's honor in 1964.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/2155 |title=Gibbs |work=Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature |publisher=International Astronomical Union |access-date=December 11, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171222162448/https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/2155 |archive-date=December 22, 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[Edward Guggenheim]] introduced the symbol ''G'' for the Gibbs free energy in 1933, and this was used also by [[Dirk ter Haar]] in 1966.<ref name="G">Seeger 1974, p. 96</ref> This notation is now universal and is recommended by the [[International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry|IUPAC]].<ref name="IUPAC-G">{{Cite book| doi = 10.1351/goldbook.G02629 | chapter = Gibbs energy (function), G | title = IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology | year = 2009 | isbn = 978-0-9678550-9-7 }}</ref> In 1960, William Giauque and others suggested the name "gibbs" (abbreviated gbs.) for the unit of entropy [[calorie]] per [[kelvin]],<ref name="Giauque-unit">{{cite journal |doi=10.1021/ja01486a014 |title=The Thermodynamic Properties of Aqueous Sulfuric Acid Solutions and Hydrates from 15 to 300K.1 |journal=Journal of the American Chemical Society |volume=82 |pages=62–70 |year=1960 |last1=Giauque |first1=W. F. |last2=Hornung |first2=E. W. |last3=Kunzler |first3=J. E. |last4=Rubin |first4=T. R. |issue=1 |bibcode=1960JAChS..82...62G }}</ref> but this usage did not become common, and the corresponding [[International System of Units|SI]] unit [[joule]] per kelvin carries no special name.

In 1954, a year before his death, Albert Einstein was asked by an interviewer who were the greatest thinkers that he had known. Einstein replied: "[[Hendrik Lorentz|Lorentz]]", adding "I never met Willard Gibbs; perhaps, had I done so, I might have placed him beside Lorentz."<ref name="Pais">{{cite book |title=Subtle is the Lord |url=https://archive.org/details/subtleislordscie00pais |url-access=registration |last=Pais |first=Abraham |author-link=Abraham Pais |year=1982 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |page = [https://archive.org/details/subtleislordscie00pais/page/73 73]|isbn= 978-0-19-280672-7}}</ref> Author [[Bill Bryson]] in his bestselling [[popular science]] book ''[[A Short History of Nearly Everything]]'' ranks Gibbs as "perhaps the most brilliant person that most people have never heard of".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bryson |first1=Bill |title=A Short History of Nearly Everything |date=2003 |publisher=Broadway Books, Random House, Inc. |location=New York City |isbn=0-7679-0818-X |page=116 |edition=1st paperback |quote=Gibbs is perhaps the most brilliant person that most people have never heard of. Modest to the point of near invisibility, he passed virtually the whole of his life, apart from three years spent studying in Europe, within a three-block area bounded by his house and the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut. For his first ten years at Yale he didn’t even bother to draw a salary. (He had independent means.) From 1871, when he joined the university as a professor, to his death in 1903, his courses attracted an average of slightly over one student a semester. His written work was difficult to follow and employed a private form of notation that many found incomprehensible. But buried among his arcane formulations were insights of the loftiest brilliance.}}</ref>

In 1958, USS ''San Carlos'' was renamed [[USS San Carlos (AVP-51)#Oceanographic research ship|USNS ''Josiah Willard Gibbs'']] and re-designated as an oceanographic research ship.

=== In literature ===
In 1909, the American historian and novelist [[Henry Adams]] finished an essay entitled "The Rule of Phase Applied to History", in which he sought to apply Gibbs's phase rule and other thermodynamic concepts to a general theory of human history. [[William James]], Henry Bumstead, and others criticized both Adams's tenuous grasp of the scientific concepts that he invoked, as well as the arbitrariness of his application of those concepts as metaphors for the evolution of human thought and society.<ref name="Mindel-Adams">{{cite journal |doi=10.2307/2708401 |jstor=2708401 |title=The Uses of Metaphor: Henry Adams and the Symbols of Science |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=89–102 |year=1965 |last1=Mindel |first1=Joseph }}</ref>  The essay remained unpublished until it appeared posthumously in 1919, in ''The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma'', edited by Henry Adams's younger brother [[Brooks Adams|Brooks]].<ref name="Degradation">{{cite book |title=The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma |last=Adams |first=Henry |author-link=Henry Adams |editor-last = Adams |editor-first = Brooks |year=1919 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/thedegradationof00adamuoft |access-date=May 5, 2012}}</ref>

[[File:Fortune June 1946.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Cover of June 1946 issue of ''Fortune'' magazine, showing an artist's rendition of Gibbs's thermodynamic surface for water|Cover of the June 1946 issue of ''[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]'', by artist Arthur Lidov, showing Gibbs's thermodynamic surface of water and his formula for the phase rule]]

In the 1930s, feminist poet [[Muriel Rukeyser]] became fascinated by Willard Gibbs and wrote a long poem about his life and work ("Gibbs", included in the collection ''A Turning Wind'', published in 1939), as well as a book-length biography (''Willard Gibbs'', 1942).<ref name="Gander-Lives">{{cite book |last=Gander |first=Catherine |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/murielrukeyserdo0000unse/page/73/mode/2up |title=Muriel Rukeyser and Documentary: The Poetics of Connection |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-7486-7053-6 |location=Edinburgh |pages=73–120 |chapter=The Lives |chapter-url-access=registration}}</ref>  According to Rukeyser:

{{blockquote|Willard Gibbs is the type of the imagination at work in the world. His story is that of an opening up which has had its effect on our lives and our thinking; and, it seems to me, it is the emblem of the naked imagination—which is called abstract and impractical, but whose discoveries can be used by anyone who is interested, in whatever "field"—an imagination which for me, more than that of any other figure in American thought, any poet, or political, or religious figure, stands for imagination at its essential points.| Muriel Rukeyser, 1949<ref name="Rukeyser-PT">{{cite journal |doi=10.1063/1.3066422 |title=Josiah Willard Gibbs |journal=Physics Today |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=6–27 |year=1949 |last1=Rukeyser |first1=Muriel |bibcode=1949PhT.....2b...6R }}</ref>}}

In 1946, ''[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]'' magazine illustrated a cover story on "Fundamental Science" with a representation of the [[Maxwell's thermodynamic surface|thermodynamic surface]] that Maxwell had built based on Gibbs's proposal. Rukeyser called this surface a "statue of water"<ref>Rukeyser 1988, p. 203</ref> and the magazine saw in it "the abstract creation of a great American scientist that lends itself to the symbolism of contemporary art forms."<ref name="Fortune">{{cite journal |year=1946 |title=The Great Science Debate |journal=[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]] |volume=33 |issue=6 |page=117}}</ref> The artwork by Arthur Lidov also included Gibbs's mathematical expression of the phase rule for heterogeneous mixtures, as well as a [[radar]] screen, an [[oscilloscope]] waveform, [[Isaac Newton|Newton's]] apple, and a small rendition of a three-dimensional phase diagram.<ref name="Fortune" />

Gibbs's nephew, Ralph Gibbs Van Name, a professor of physical chemistry at Yale, was unhappy with Rukeyser's biography, in part because of her lack of scientific training. Van Name had withheld the family papers from her and, after her book was published in 1942 to positive literary but mixed scientific reviews, he tried to encourage Gibbs's former students to produce a more technically oriented biography.<ref name="family-papers">{{cite web |url=http://drs.library.yale.edu/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=beinecke:gibbs&query=&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&big=&adv=&filter=&hitPageStart=&sortFields=&view=all |title=Guide to the Gibbs-Van Name Papers |last = Holeman | first = Heather L. |year = 1986 | publisher=Yale University Library |access-date = January 18, 2013}}</ref> Rukeyser's approach to Gibbs was also sharply criticized by Gibbs's former student and protégé Edwin Wilson.<ref name="Wilson-rev1">{{cite journal |doi=10.1126/science.99.2576.386 |pmid=17844056 |title=Starring Subjects in "american Men of Science" |journal=Science |volume=99 |issue=2576 |pages=386 |year=1944 |last1=Miller |first1=G. A. |bibcode=1944Sci....99..386M }}</ref>  With Van Name's and Wilson's encouragement, physicist Lynde Wheeler published a new biography of Gibbs in 1951.<ref name="Wheeler-preface">Wheeler 1998, pp.&nbsp;ix–xiii</ref><ref name="Wilson-rev2">{{Cite journal | last1 = Wilson | first1 = Edwin B. | year = 1951 | title = Josiah Willard Gibbs | journal = American Scientist | volume = 39 | issue = 2 | pages = 287–289 | jstor = 27826371 }}</ref>

Both Gibbs and Rukeyser's biography of him figure prominently in the poetry collection ''True North'' (1997) by [[Stephanie Strickland]].<ref name="Strickland">{{cite book |title=True North |last=Strickland |first=Stephanie |author-link=Stephanie Strickland |year=1997 |publisher=University of Notre Dame Press |location=Notre Dame, IN |isbn= 978-0-268-01899-3}}</ref>  In fiction, Gibbs appears as the mentor to character Kit Traverse in [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s novel ''[[Against the Day]]'' (2006). That novel also prominently discusses the birefringence of [[Iceland spar]], an optical phenomenon that Gibbs investigated.<ref name="Pynchon">{{cite book |title=Against the Day |url=https://archive.org/details/againstday00pync |url-access=registration |last=Pynchon |first=Thomas |author-link=Thomas Pynchon |year=2006 |publisher=Penguin |location=New York |isbn= 978-1-59420-120-2}}</ref>

=== Gibbs stamp (2005) ===

In 2005, the [[United States Postal Service]] issued the ''American Scientists'' commemorative [[postage stamp]] series designed by artist [[Victor Stabin]], depicting Gibbs, [[John von Neumann]], [[Barbara McClintock]], and [[Richard Feynman]]. The [[first day of issue]] ceremony for the series was held on May 4 at Yale University's Luce Hall and was attended by [[John Marburger]], scientific advisor to the president of the United States, [[Rick Levin]], president of Yale, and family members of the scientists honored, including physician John W. Gibbs, a distant cousin of Willard Gibbs.<ref name="stamp-issue">{{cite news |title=Yale scientist featured in new stamp series |url=http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v33.n29/story3.html |newspaper=Yale Bulletin & Calendar |date=May 20, 2005 |volume=33 |number=28 |access-date=November 30, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141030122112/http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v33.n29/story3.html |archive-date=October 30, 2014 }}</ref>

Kenneth R. Jolls, a professor of chemical engineering at [[Iowa State University]] and an expert on graphical methods in thermodynamics, consulted on the design of the stamp honoring Gibbs.<ref name="Jolls-stamp">{{cite news |title=Iowa State Chemical Engineer Drives Issue of New Stamp Honoring Father of Thermodynamics |url=http://www.eng.iastate.edu/coe/feature/jolls.asp |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121030193200/http://www.eng.iastate.edu/coe/feature/jolls.asp |archive-date=October 30, 2012 |newspaper=College Feature, Iowa State University, College of Engineering |year=2004 |access-date=November 17, 2012}}</ref><ref name="ISU-stamp">{{cite news |title=ISU professor helps develop postage stamp honoring noted scientist |first= Annette |last= Hacker |url=http://www.public.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/04/nov/stamp.shtml |newspaper=News Service, Iowa State University |date=November 11, 2004 |access-date=November 17, 2012}}</ref><ref name="chem-eng-stamp">{{cite journal |year=2005 |title=Postal Service Pays Homage to Josiah Willard Gibbs |journal=Chemical Engineering Progress |volume=101 |issue=7 |page=57}}</ref>  The stamp identifies Gibbs as a "thermodynamicist" and features a diagram from the 4th edition of Maxwell's ''Theory of Heat'', published in 1875, which illustrates Gibbs's thermodynamic surface for water.<ref name="ISU-stamp" /><ref name="chem-eng-stamp" />  [[Microprinting]] on the [[Collar (clothing)|collar]] of Gibbs's portrait depicts his original mathematical equation for the change in the energy of a substance in terms of its entropy and the other state variables.<ref name="Spakovszky-stamp">{{cite journal |last=Spakovszky |first= Zoltan |year=2005 |title=Stamp of Authenticity |journal=Mechanical Engineering |publisher=ASME |volume=128 |issue=4 |page=7 |url=http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/figures/MechEng-4-2006-Gibbs.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/figures/MechEng-4-2006-Gibbs.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live}}</ref>