Editing Josiah Willard Gibbs (section)

=== Education ===

Willard Gibbs was educated at the [[Hopkins School]] and entered [[Yale College]] in 1854 at the age of 15. At Yale, Gibbs received prizes for excellence in [[mathematics]] and [[Latin]], and he graduated in 1858, near the top of his class.<ref name="MacTutor">{{cite web | url = http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Gibbs.html | title = Josiah Willard Gibbs | last1 = O'Connor | first1 = John J. | last2 = Robertson | first2 = Edmund F. | year = 1997 | work = The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive | publisher = University of St Andrews, Scotland. School of Mathematics and Statistics | access-date = June 16, 2012 | archive-date = October 30, 2014 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20141030174241/http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Gibbs.html | url-status = dead }}</ref> He remained at Yale as a graduate student at the [[Sheffield Scientific School]]. At age 19, soon after his graduation from college, Gibbs was inducted into the [[Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences]], a scholarly institution composed primarily of members of the Yale faculty.<ref name="Rukeyser-CTAcademy">Rukeyser 1988, p. 104</ref>

Relatively few documents from the period survive and it is difficult to reconstruct the details of Gibbs's early career with precision.<ref name="Wheeler-college">Wheeler 1998, pp.&nbsp;23–24</ref> In the opinion of biographers, Gibbs's principal mentor and champion, both at Yale and in the Connecticut Academy, was probably the astronomer and mathematician [[Hubert Anson Newton]], a leading authority on [[Meteoroid|meteors]], who remained Gibbs's lifelong friend and confidant.<ref name="Rukeyser-CTAcademy" /><ref name="Wheeler-college" /> After the death of his father in 1861, Gibbs inherited enough money to make him financially independent.<ref name="Rukeyser-inheritance">Rukeyser 1998, pp.&nbsp;120, 142</ref>

Recurrent [[Lung|pulmonary]] trouble ailed the young Gibbs and his physicians were concerned that he might be susceptible to [[tuberculosis]], which had killed his mother. He also suffered from [[Astigmatism (eye)|astigmatism]], whose treatment was then still largely unfamiliar to [[Ophthalmology|oculists]], so that Gibbs had to diagnose himself and grind his own lenses.<ref name="Wheeler-astigmatism">Wheeler 1998, pp.&nbsp;29–31</ref><ref name="Rukeyser-astigmatism">Rukeyser 1988, p. 143</ref> Though in later years he used [[glasses]] only for reading or other close work,<ref name="Wheeler-astigmatism" /> Gibbs's delicate health and imperfect eyesight probably explain why he did not volunteer to fight in the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] of 1861–65.<ref name="Wheeler-war">Wheeler 1998, p. 30</ref>  He was not [[Conscription in the United States#Civil War|conscripted]] and he remained at Yale for the duration of the war.<ref name="Rukeyser-war">Rukeyser 1998, p. 134</ref>

[[File:JWGibbs-tutor.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Portrait of Willard Gibbs as a Yale College tutor|Gibbs during his time as a tutor at Yale<ref>Wheeler 1998, p. 44</ref>]]

In 1863, Gibbs received the first [[Doctorate of Philosophy]] (PhD) in engineering granted in the US, for a thesis entitled "On the Form of the Teeth of Wheels in Spur Gearing", in which he used geometrical techniques to investigate the optimum design for [[gear]]s.<ref name="MacTutor" /><ref name="Wheeler-PhD">Wheeler 1998, p. 32</ref><ref>{{cite book | url =http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3439123 | title =On the form of the teeth of wheels in spur gearing | last =Gibbs | first =Josiah W. | date =1863 | access-date =March 27, 2016| bibcode =1863PhDT.........1G }}</ref> In 1861, Yale had become the first US university to offer a PhD degree<ref name="ElmarsafyBernard2013">{{cite book|author1=Ziad Elmarsafy|author2=Anna Bernard|title=Debating Orientalism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VP6ARP2m-D0C&pg=PA85|date=June 13, 2013|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-1-137-34111-2|page=85}}</ref> and Gibbs's was only the fifth PhD granted in the US in any subject.<ref name="Wheeler-PhD" />