Editing Josiah Willard Gibbs (section)

=== 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  The essay remained unpublished until it appeared posthumously in 1919, in ''The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma'', edited by Henry Adams's younger brother [[Brooks Adams|Brooks]].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>